City Council - Regular Meeting

hanger, a steel beacon and other parts of the airport. So those are celebrated uh to some extent but not you know widely publicized. So that's something uh to take a look at. um opportunities for non-avviation development in the airport are limited. This is this comes from the Federal Aviation Administration. Um which makes a lot of sense, right? The the airport is supposed to be airport and and uses at the airport are supposed to serve aeronautical uses in general. So the FAA is uh rightly strict about non-aronautical uses um at an airport. Um, we think that there's one particular property uh within the fence, as they say, that might have some opportunities for non-eronautical use that would have to go through an FAA conversation and regulatory pathway to make that work. But we took a look at it uh as an exercise to think about increasing revenues for the airport overall. So, I'll let talk about that in just a second. So the two project pathways and I mentioned this um at the beginning of the presentation again we were trying to think about different alternatives uh for the future uh of the airport. So there are these operating alternatives I'm going to talk about here in a second and those are looking at preserving the use uh of the airport and uh modifying um uh uh revenues and looking for other types of investments um to make sure that um the airport uh can get into the black and be um financially stable into the future. And then there's the redevelopment alternatives. And again, we're going to come back to why that's um such a challenging pathway here for the airport. Under the uh operating alternatives and these uh stack on each other as well. We have three operating alternatives. One of them is uh preserve and we have enhance and modify.

The preserve uh alternative is looking at some cost control options. So uh reducing some transfers. So there's a um uh transfers from uh uh the airport to central services for wetland fees, things like that. Maybe reducing some of the transfers. That doesn't reduce your overall city budget costs, right? that's moving dollars around, but it changes the picture of um of the airport's uh financials. Um we took a look at uh combining management with other airports uh and or perhaps having a a private operator there at the airport. The opportunity to save uh money there isn't great. The airport's already run really efficiently from an operations standpoint. Um, so maybe there's there's a little bit of a change there, but um, it's not significant. Um, the airport, you're already benchmarking your fees right now. So that's something that's a a great um uh action to take. Uh, so that's something so continuing to do that uh is is part of this option. Uh another uh action that other airports take on um and we saw this in the Eugene airport is charging a fee for uh interant aircraft. So aircraft that aren't based at your airport would pay a fee to land there. Eugene Eugene has a much bigger uh airport, right? And so they are able to collect quite a bit of uh fee from that uh that measure. So it could it could generate some additional revenue. But um again it's probably limited. So the preserve operating alternatives is really about incremental growth and about tweaking some things that you're already working on. Um so it's does it um uh kind of increase the operational efficiency of the airport? Yes, but it

does so in a limited way. The enhanced operating alternative is um taking a look at capital investment into the airport. So this is saying well what if the city were to invest in c certain types of improvements so as to increase revenue uh at the airport. Um one of the ideas that was floated was would a restaurant work there? Would that be a way to increase revenue? This is a high capital high-risk endeavor. uh restaurants no matter where they are uh typically lasts three to five years and so that we think is you know high risk uh high capital. Um another um alternative here within enhance is to take a look at what's called the displace threshold. So this is the kind of marker along the runway where operations landings and takeoffs uh can occur. This is a somewhat of an regulatory barrier that would uh require conversations with the FAA. um what it would do in our understanding is enable uh the full range of um light aircraft to land at the runway, but you're probably going to be gaining about 5% more uh operations through that. So that's something to look into, but again it's not a huge uh gamecher in terms of um revenue. Also, if you're having more operations, you're also having more costs there. So again, it's somewhat limited. Um hanger development is an option here within enhance uh the enhance operating alternative that has the most promise. So this is taking a look at either um doing what you already do and ground ground leasing some of space for uh private developers to build hangers then to to lease out um or um the city building your own hangers and then leasing them out. And as you would

imagine, one of them would be kind of low risk, low cost, low revenue. The ground lease option. If you were to build your own hanger, of course, you have to put that capital investment in and it would take you a number of years to recoup that despite the higher uh rate for leasing out the built space. Um so that's that's worth uh pursuing. Of course, it's really dependent on market absorption. As we talk to stakeholders, we hear that um there is demand for additional hanger space um up and down the west coast actually. Um but that's not something that we looked into in incredible depth. So, but it's worth it's worth taking a look at in the modify scenario. What the modify scenario is doing is this is uh looking at that question of non-aronautical use at the airport that I mentioned. So there's one uh part of the airport here. The orientation here is a little bit challenging. I know uh north is to our to our right there. So we have this oriented um uh differently, but that orange area there is about five acres uh in the southeast corner of the airport. Um this is an area that is there's no taxi away currently on that side of the runway. Um and so we took a look at u well what if this uh parcel was turned into a non-eronautical use. Uh would it be feasible? Would that potentially generate revenue for the city? Um we the process of doing this is uh looking at the highest and best use of that site. It's zoned for industrial manufacturing or warehouse uh uses. Um and so we we did actually a little bit of a a financial feasibility test on a couple of those different uses looking at a 50,000 square foot industrial building. Um we do what's called scenario testing with all of this feasibility work that you know sometimes putting in

assumptions of well what if the building were a really nice building but they you know they were charging higher rents or what if it was just a metal tiltup building and they could only charge so much and so we kind of get a range of outputs from that. the range of outputs go from negative. It would be infeasible. It would not attract developer. It wouldn't happen. To no, this is this is revenue positive. This could potentially generate up to uh $50,000 a year in a a ground lease scenario where the city ground leased it to a developer and said, "You build the the building, we'll have a 30, you know, 40 long longterm uh ground lease on this and you're just collecting that ground lease fee." So, that has a potential there. Something to note, however, as we benchmarked ground leases uh for industrial properties at airports in the region, uh the ground lease rate for non-eronautical uses was less than the rate that you're already using for hangers at the airport. So hangers uh ground leasing for a hanger would actually generate more revenue than for the non-eronautical industrial use. So that runs through the three operating alternatives that we took a look at. And now let's get back to uh why we had a project pivot in the middle uh of the project and uh why we we only looked at the that hypothetical example of closing the airport down and turning it into something else only to a to kind of a summary level and that's because we had a number of conversations with the FAA with the Oregon Department of Aviation and did research on the precedent of NPIUS airports. uh closing down. We found zero precedent of NPIUS airports closing down in the past over the past 20 years. And talking to the FAA, they said this is akin to, you know, would you close down a highway? Would you close down I5 between Albany and Eugene?

It's that's completely out of the question, right? So, Nippius airports again uh form all of the nodes in the aviation system across our nation and the federal government works very hard to preserve that system. On top of the challenging regulatory uh barrier there, there would also be significant upfront cost in closing the airport. Uh the FAA and the ODA have supported the Albany Municipal Airport as they do all NPIUS airports through grants, what's called grant asurances and the closing of airports would trigger an immediate payback of all of those grants. It would these numbers would change from year to year depending on when the grant was issued. But if uh if the airport were to be closed today, it would be about $9.3 million back to the FAA. and um upwards to half million dollars uh to the ODA. Those numbers don't also take into account uh closeout of leases, ground leases that you have with private operators at the airport and that would be in addition to uh these costs. So the those conversations again with uh with the regulators and jumping into the process you will see in our final report also we have a detailed um review of the entire process to close down an airport really showed us that it's uh would be a very complex very difficult pathway to try to close the airport and so we really shifted into focus on those operating alternatives instead. So, just a few observations before I turn it back to Paul here uh with the staff report. Um it's clear from our work that the Albany airport is an important public asset and one of historical significance. Um again, it has some of those uh nationally

recognized historic uh buildings and improvements. Um and it's an important part of the Oregon and the nationwide uh aviation network. like I just talked about, closing the airport would be far more complex than a local land use decision uh or even a land use decision where you'd have to uh engage with uh with the state. Um again, it's a very rare occurrence that a nipius airport uh closes. The deficit, the structural deficit that we talked about is uh is real. Uh it's about $100,000 uh a year right now. Um to put that in perspective, that's less than 1% of your annual adopted budget. Those dollars also don't come out of uh the general fund right now. They're coming out of a capital fund. I know um we can talk more about that. Um and going through all of these different alternatives. Again, there's no single strategy. Unfortunately, this is the this is the situation with with so many projects like this. There is no silver bullet that will will fix this. but it's through a combin combination of actions and strategies um to move the airport into a better financial position. And with that, Paul, I will turn it to you.

Okay. Thank you very much. I want to appreciate um Eco Northwest and their work on this and and sort of laying out where we are. Um but I also want to say, you know, how excited I'm I'm to be here tonight um and this to be my first topic, which is the Albany Municipal Airport. Um it's been just a couple of months. um and a short period of time, but it's been great. You know, first I want to say that, you know, I I can't say enough. I want to compliment, you know, US Stewards for having such an incredibly beautiful uh city as a whole. The city has so many wonderful jewels and ever having spent some time at the airport clearly, as was said, the 1929 historic hanger has is another beautiful piece of history, which provides the airport and the city a unique opportunity uh for the future. Based on the study and our discussions with Airport Advisory Commission, FAA, and the Oregon Department of Aviation, our staff recommendation is to move forward with four practical near-term uh actions. These steps will keep the airport open, honor its historic value, and improve financial performance, and position uh the airport for long-term success. Um, you know, I think a key thing here is first to develop a a comprehensive marketing plan for the Albany Municipal Airport. It's the the oldest continuously operating airfield since 1920 and the first in the state to be listed as the national uh register of historic places. The airport has a compelling story um that is clearly undertold. Um, this plan will focus on opportunities to increase general aviation activity and attract new tenants, including emerging aviation technology businesses. Promote the 1929 hangar, air museum as a premier community event space, flyins, young eagles, rallies, um, uh, uh, experimental aircraft association or the

EAA partnerships are just a few of what what I see as many possibilities. As part of the process, we will conduct a detailed analysis informed by the study and the 2016 master plan um and and targeted digital content and partnerships with the Albany Visitors Association and local economic development organization. The goal is simple. Turn this incredible historic asset into a more visible economic driver for the region. Um second, um we need to expand community and stakeholder outreach. you the airport advisory commission and current users are passionate um for sure which is great though creating improved understanding of airport operations and connection requires broader engagement across Albany um and that's to build and understand and support for the long term and that includes the value of the operations in the history of the city um and third identify and pursue targeted enhancements for operational efficiencies and selective non-avviation revenue revenue opportunities. They those always have to be consistent with FAA and ODA uh requirements. Um the key piece is maximizing aviation use and connectivity and its historic identity. The study confirms we can modestly reduce the current $100,000 annual operating gap through cost control, updated leases and fees, and limited compatible uh uh developments such as obviously the 5acre site without compromising aviation use. Fourth, um develop an airportwide design standards that preserve and prominently feature the airport's key historic construction. um especially obviously the distinctive lattice trust, redwood material, color palette of the 1929 hanger and the steel beacon tower. These standards will

reinforce the National Register uh historic district identity, create visual consistency across the airport and guide future tenant improvements, signage and development. Taken together, these four steps focus on preserving and enhancing the airport and the aviation activities, making it a viable public asset, creating events to celebrate its history and connection to the community. Um, so with that, we're happy to take any questions that you may have. Council, any questions? I do. I have uh two questions. Council Newton.

Yes. Uh, so I know you mentioned Eugene earlier uh which is much much larger than this airport, right? Uh do you have any examples of similarly sized airports um that have successfully improved financial performance and curious if you know of any strategies that they used?

Yeah. Uh great question uh counselor. Um we did um take a look at a number of different airports uh in Oregon and I think um Tiberia Solutions who's a subconsultant actually made a number of phone calls to Corvalis um and and a few others uh there. I think um some of the measures that we've talked about here in those operating strategies around um either uh kind of operational effic efficiency through um combining management with other airports um benchmarking benchmarking your uh hanger fees and other fees to market making sure that those are up to date were a bunch of the findings from some of that research. I I didn't introduce Nicole our project manager on this project. I don't know if you have more detail to provide here too.

I don't I don't have any more detail other than to say like a lot of what we heard from them is oh you got more hangers. Um which is you know really I think the obvious the more obvious answer but um when we were looking at this a lot of what we heard is is there also kind of in many of them are in a similar boat like it's okay it's not a revenue passive revenue generator. Okay. And then my other question is so I love the airport because of its significant historical value. I I also agree it is a jewel in our neighbor in our community. Um are do you know or are you aware of any grant or tourism opportunities tied to preserving that history? So that's a great question.

I that is a good question. I I can't answer that question. I I'd have to do some more research. I don't know that specifically in that area. Most of the FAA grants are really about the infrastructure itself. We'd have to take a look at that. Yeah, I'd love love to hear any any research that you happen to come across. That'd be great. Definitely. Any counselor have anything? Um, I had a question. Um, several years ago when I took tours of the hangers, several of those hangers had furniture, cars that weren't tagged since 1995. Is there a plan or will you be developing a plan to mitigate the misuse of the hangers?

Yes. So, part of this part of what I was trying to lay out, you know, there's a series of steps that I think we have to work through. Um but one of the things is really looking at aviation use that to really focus to make sure hanger usage is espec especially focused on aviation use. Um so that's broadly across those areas. Um and then also really looking at the lease rates and how they're structured. There's lots of opportunity here. Um there is a demand for hangers. I've seen it not only uh in other states it's across the country. There's a lot of opportunities also u to bring in thirdparty entities that are willing to fund the construction of hangers um as a whole. Um but that means that we have to really come up with a good design standard. The design standards also looking at leases help us have a better conversation with the current uh uh lease holders and really trying to work through that in a given period of time. We have takes some time with it but we will work through that. I I personally like um during the pandemic a lot of airports canceled events and we had the 99s fly into Albany and we had a familiar Airheart's birthday at the airport and it was drew a lot of attention. A lady flew in with her granddaughter, great-granddaughter from Alabama. She was in her 90s. So it was nice to see that airport being used like that.

Yeah, lots of opportunities for that in the future. Anything else? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Next on tonight's agenda is item B4B, draft strategic plan presentation. Caleb Barber and SSW Northwest. Sarah Single Northwest. Is that right? You online? There she is. Right there. SSW. It's our consultant Sarah Singer Wilson. Yes. Hey Sarah. We actually have uh Ashley joining us tonight. Just give me a minute to get us Hi, Ashley.

Hi. Hello. There we go. Um and so Ashley's actually going to kick us off. We're going to be tag teaming tonight. Um, so I'm going to let her start and then we will transition partway through. So go ahead, Ashley. Great. Thank you, Kayla. Can everyone hear me? All right. I I believe so.

Wonderful. Thank you. Well, good evening, Mayor Council. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be with you this evening. My name is Ashley Sonoff. I'm an associate with SSW Consulting, and I look forward to sharing an update with you on the strategic planning process. All right, we can go to the next slide. So, first um just a little overview of our presentation tonight. First, we're going to reorient ourselves to the strategic planning journey that we've been on together since we began the work in late August. Then we're going to share some highlights from the community engagement process. How we engaged, who we heard from, uh what we heard, so that you can see how the results of the engagement connect to what you will see in the resulting strategic plan. And then we'll present the draft strategic plan to you outlining the framework of the plan, sharing the mission, vision, and value statements, the vision areas, and the supporting goals which advance each vision area, including uh measures of success to track progress along the way. And as we move through this presentation, uh we will be stopping uh at the end of the different sections to check in with you to see if there's any questions or gather your feedback. So much of this work is intertwined and so it's possible we might answer your question along the way, but we want to intentionally check in with you after each section so you don't have to wait till the end of the presentation to share any comments that you have um or get a question answered. And then uh finally at the end of the presentation we'll discuss next steps. So including how we're checking in with community members to gather their input on this draft version of the plan um as well as how we are planning to incorporate uh that feedback and the council's feedback into the final version of the strategic plan which will be coming to you um for your consideration for adoption on May 27th.

Next slide. So we began this work with four goals in mind. Um first to create a strategic plan that defines broad vision areas. So vision areas capturing 20 to 10 to 20 years, medium-term goals that are three to five years in length and then tactical objectives that are one to two years in length that are aligned to each goal. We also wanted to make sure that we identified vision areas and core values through meaningful engagement with the council staff and the community to ensure that they guide uh service delivery and decision-m. And part of this process um that's particularly important is defining measures of success that are meaningful and trackable um to demonstrate uh results and progress along the way and also maintaining accountability um and transparency to the council and the community. So this is what we set out to do. This is what we're doing and this is how well we're accomplishing that. Um and then finally around uh fostering a culture of strategic management and embedding that in just further into the culture. Albany already has a strong culture of strategic management but f further strengthening that culture um and that's done so through aligning the plan with um the community council and staff input as well as other formal processes like the budget and department work plans. Next slide. This is our project timeline. So just reorient you to the process that we've been on together. Uh we started this work back in August of last year uh when we de developed our approach and the timeline for this work and some planning that took place. And then in October you gathered with uh Sarah Wilson for the strategic planning workshop. Um and that's when we we did a couple uh different exercises uh with council and staff. We looked back at the history of Albany and how key events at policies and decisions over the years have

influenced where Albany is today. We also developed a shared understanding of the current context in Albany. Uh things like you looked at things like economic climate, uh the way the community has grown and changed over the years, um political factors, changes in technology, and different needs in the community. And then finally uh um you completed a visioning exercise together that identified the council's priorities for the future in Albany. And all of this work we did together in the workshop helped inform the engagement that took place between December and February. Um and then we did that engagement with council and sta um sorry with the community and with staff. And I'll share more on the engagement in a moment. And then finally between uh February and May we moved into the development of the strategic plan where we took the results of the outreach and drafted the updated mission statement, vision statement, updated the organizational values to reflect all of the input that we received. Uh we met with staff from across the organization to refine these statements and make sure they really capture the essence of Albany as a community and as an organization. and we organized the community priorities that we gathered from the outreach into themes which then became our five focus areas or our vision areas. We worked with staff in an action planning workshop in March to take uh the community engagement results and discuss what does success look like in each of these vision areas and identify specific projects and initiatives that would um advance each of those outcomes. From there there was more more engagement with each department to uh to refine the supporting goals and objectives to bring clarity and practicality to the plan as well as develop u per uh measurable performance indicators to track the progress over time and uh to keep in uh the council and the community informed. And then finally, we've draft drafted the strategic plan report which tells the story of this journey um and presents

the final version of the plan demonstrating how it um how the resulting plan connects to the community input that we received. And so here we are sharing the draft plan with you uh you tonight so that we can make any adjustments needed to make sure that we get the plan right before it comes to you um for adoption later this month. All right. So, moving on to the next slide. I said I was going to share a little bit more about the community engagement and in the next few slides. This is a refresher of a previous um presentation that we gave um with the community engagement results. But I want to make so I might go through it a little more quickly, but I do want to include this in the presentation because I think it's critical to see how uh the input from the community is directly reflected in the plan. And so um this slide shows how the various ways that we engaged. Um we conducted a variety of um engagement in person through events and focus groups with high school students. We had engagement boards at the library in the pool. We had a variety of staff engagement from lunch and learns to workshop and focus groups. We hosted a community and staff survey online that promoted um and promoted ways for community members to share their input with us. And we did that through emails and social media campaigns and the city website. And then we also distributed a variety of printed materials including fact sheets, flyers, table tents, business cards around uh city facilities and local businesses um to inform people about the strategic planning process and give them an opportunity to share their input. All right, next slide. And here you can see um who we heard from. Over 1500 community members completed the online survey. We met with uh roughly um 150 high school students through uh three different focus groups. Uh we met with nearly 60 uh seniors at the holiday

lunch event at the RCC. So overall we heard from over 1,700 uh members in your community. All right. And the next slide is really captures the essence of what we heard in the engagement. Um, of course there's more that we could go into detail um with, but you'll see how these things connect in the plan, but the high points are these are the top priorities. Um, the first was uh improving the condition of the streets and roads and traffic improvements around the city. The second was around housing affordability and this focus on a desire to for more options and levels of housing such as workforce housing, um opportunities for families to purchase their first home and opportunities for seniors to to downsize. At the same time, um we also received in community input asking to slow down highdensity housing and focus on single family homes. So there's definitely uh both perspectives, but there's a broader um broader desire for more housing and more housing that's accessible. Third um was centered around a thriving downtown. So supporting uh local businesses and the unique character of Albany. This is tied to economic vitality in Albany. But this also this um but also this connection um for thriving but also it reflects this desire for connection and um that um that residents have to to gather with each other and these h having these areas for um like thriving economic opportunities or thriving downtown that creates these authentic connection points for uh for residents and neighbors to see each other um and interact with each other. there also create spaces to gather uh for community events. And so that was really um an important subcategory of a thriving downtown is this strong con um piece to

having that small town connection and that unique character. And then fourth um community safety and this showed up as um as a couple things. One is traffic traffic safety. So things like speeding um you know people running red lights, things of that nature. Um, but it also reflected a feeling of safety in public spaces such as parks and trails. Um, and also connected to um, broader concerns around homelessness and the presence of those that are affected by homelessness in these spaces and the feelings residents have of decreased accessibility and safety in in using these spaces. And so overall uh key takeaways that we heard um from the engagement is just a really strong desire from community members for the city to focus on improving existing assets and infrastructure um before expanding and and um and growing further. So there's you know focus on uh streets and roads um and other utilities and the and other those assets. Um, also a desire to maintain the unique character and community connection as Albany continues to grow. And then finally to increase opportunities for living wage jobs in a variety of housing types. And before we move on to draft strategic plan, just want to pause and ask if there's any questions. I know a lot of that is a review from what you've heard before, council, but if there's any questions, um, I can take those now.

Councelor Newton. Oh, I have I have a lot of questions. um save some for us.

Okay. So, one thing that stood out to me while reviewing both the strategic plan and also um the raw community feedback data that we got um two days ago is that the public input felt a lot more anxious and urgent. I'm not sure if anyone else felt that when they were reading that um than the tone that's really reflected in this in this presentation. um residents were consistently, you know, raising concerns about traffic, about infrastructure, about maintenance, and and whether growth um is already outpacing the city's capacity to keep up. Um I do I do think that this uh strategic plan presents a strong long-term vi uh vision. Uh but I think it's really important to to acknowledge that underlying tension that I think that residents are expressing around growth, livability, um and preserving of Alby's character. So broader few broader questions that I have. Um uh so looking at this strategic plan um I'm curious from staff's staff's perspective um which parts uh will require the strongest council policy direction versus administration implementation? Um are there any areas where staff feels like the plan might still be um intentionally vague because additional council direction might be needed? And then uh I have just four other questions uh that I'll just I'll give them all to you now uh quickly. Uh so the feedback around traffic and and congestion felt more urgent than the tone that was reflected in the strate strategic plan. Um I am just curious about how staff decided uh on on how strongly to frame that concern. Uh I'm also curious uh what objective MA measures does a city is the city going to use to determine whether growth is outpacing infrastructure capacity and uh what

systems or corridors we're going to be using uh and what maybe we're more concerned about over the next five or 10 years and um the path sorry the the plan also um emphasizes growth and opportunity. I'm also curious about where we will define limits or thresholds or or uh address any capacity concerns. Um I just want to make sure that I'm able to answer to my constituents um when they so that they know how we're um successfully balancing growth with livability. Sorry if I'm stuttering over my words. I'm kind of just trying to get everything out. Um and then finally, uh what would failure look like? I I'm curious like if we're not managing growth responsibly um would we be able to recognize that early enough to be able to respond and kind of correct course but so so there you go there's all my questions have at it maybe you can give back I don't know

so I'm actually going to um if Ashley if you have comments to the to the um to the feedback portion around being more anxious versus feeling more hopeful I I would defer to you on that piece but I will say I think the rest of your questions are going to fit fit in much more nicely in this next section where we go through the specifics of the plan. In fact, some of these are ones that we're going to hit. I'm going to try to make sure I catch the rest of them. But if I don't, I will I have them all written written down after when I reviewed everything made a few cool pivot charts if anyone wants to see them. Any counselors? Thank Thank you, counselor.

Any other counselors? Um I just had one thing for me. You know, housing affordability and the varying types of housing is really important to me. It has always been. Um, and it seemed like for me it was suppressed in this draft strategic plan and I was wondering was there a reason for that. Let's go to the next section. Okay. And we'll talk about it. Thank you. Ashley, did you have any comment you wanted to add to that before I move us into this next se or

Yes, I'll address I'll just quickly address that feeling that the sense of urgency and tension in the data. I noticed that as well and in in a presentation like this where we're trying to share the highlights so that we can focus on you know the actual plan um you know unable to go into a little bit more detail but I think that is important to share that and we did try to convey that in previous um like outreach summaries that we provided or then the meetings that we had with staff particularly in the action planning workshop. Um, and at times we even pulled out some like quotations um directly from people's comments because that really helps to capture like the the context of um um and the the sentiment behind the comments. Um because it can be challenging to take uh feedback from over you know 1500 uh people and try to uh gather and and reflect the the different sentiments there. And so trying um so just know that like as we had conversations and discussions with staff as we were spec specifically as we were talking about what does what does growth look like and what does success look like when we think about growth when we think about infrastructure needs and taking care of what we have. Um those were some we definitely had uh in-depth robust discussions around that and I I felt like that sentiment carried through in those discussions and hopefully we can um see how that carried through in the resulting strategic plan and Kayla can provide a little more context once we get to those sections as well.

Awesome. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Okay. So now let's take a look at how um how the engagement um with community council and staff is reflected in this draft strategic plan. So first of all I would like to be able uh like to review the framework for how the plan is organized. So um we're it starts with your your mission. What's your purpose? Why the organization exists? Your vision. Um here the vision is where we where the city of Albany wants to be in the next 10 to 20 years. And then values, those are focused really um really for how staff show up to work. So how how they view their work um and what guides them in that work. Um the vision areas, those are those priority focus areas that I spoke to earlier. Uh they have a 10 to 20 uh years lookout and they align with the mission mission and advance the vision. The goals are medium-term. So they're three to five year goals and they align and so there'll be goals that are under each of those vision areas and then under each goal there's these tactical tactical objectives and those are designed to be one to two years in length and they describe how we're going to achieve each of those goal areas and each of those are assigned um a staff lead and a timeline and then specific measures of success are tied um um tied throughout the plan uh to be able to show the progress um in advancing these um these goals and these vision areas. So that's that's the framework of the plan. And just a quick note about the process here with the mission statement. Um we took the themes from the engagement to write the first drafts of the of the revised mission, vision, and values. Um but then we met with staff on multiple occasions um staff from throughout the organization to ask for their feedback and we refined the statements and the values um several times because we wanted to make sure that they felt truly

relevant and unique to the context of Albany and not just general statements that you could insert you know your city name here. And so there was a lot of discussion that went into these proposed statements. And so first with the mission with the mission statement. So Alby's mission we deliver quality public services partner across the organization and community and intentionally plan for the future to ensure Albany remains a safe vibrant place to live. Uh this uh mission statement here reflect um reflects the focus on delivering uh the foundational public services and the importance of partnership both in collaboration across the organization. So, you know, across different departments working together and um and with the community to ensure that the city's direction is rooted in and informed uh by the community's experience um and that intentional, thoughtful planning um uh keeps what re residents love most about Albany as the community grows over time. And next with the vision statement, we developed both a statement and a tagline uh to that tries to capture the essence of of the vision statement and can be used on future materials that help so that you can show this shortened version of this tagline um to help uh keep focus on this shared vision together. So the tagline is your hub city safe, connected, and beautiful. And the longer vision is Oregon or is Albany is Oregon's hub city, a safe, welcoming community where neighborhoods thrive, people connect, and thoughtful infrastructure and growth create opportunity for generations. So this vision, the idea here with the vision is that it embraces um Alby's nickname as a hub city in its advantageous geographic location and in preserving opportunities for authentic neighborly connections that maintain um the small town and

unique small town feel and unique character that residents love. There's also a focus on safety so that residents can enjoy all of the beautiful public spaces and neighborhoods uh that Albany is known for. There's also a emphasis on thoughtful infrastructure and planning to take care of the existing assets that the city has. So, streets, facilities, utilities, recreation, um just to name a few and careful strategic growth to strengthen the community and expand opportunities for everyone who um for everyone who calls Albany home. Um, so before I pass um the presentation over to Kayla to share about the values, are there is there any questions specific to the mission statement or the vision statement or any feedback that you'd like to share?

Council, should I uh I really want to talk are we going to talk go through the goals and details that are we going to get into that weeds? So the next section is go ahead.

Okay. I don't want to I don't want to jump ahead. I it's fine. I okay I will say the hub city I understand it I understand the historic significance of it. Part of the hub city was using the river as a uh heavy industry waterway which we polluted tremendously. I just don't like I understand the hub city. I'm not going to fight about it but um you know I I don't know. I'm just not I'm not thrilled about continuing that that moniker. Um, I just don't think we're at the intersection of various roadways, but um, I mean, I appreciate what you did, um, on that. I'm not going to not going to make a big deal about that. Any other uh questions or comments about the mission statement, vision statement before

Council McGee, do you have anything? I don't. I just would like to say I I really appreciate the vision statement and the mission statement. I think it really encapsulate what ALME is about. So, I appreciate that. one thing that and maybe I I have a family um but and I want I want it to be our the vision theme a city where families feel safe. I just want to be inclusive of like where everyone feels safe, right? Like whether you're single Yeah. you're not whether you're like, you know, aging in place, you know, living alone or, you know, you're a young kid starting out with their first apartment, you should feel safe in Albany.

I thank you for those comments. I certainly agree. the city where families feel safe that showed up like as a theme in the vision area but we had that discussion too. So a um a lot of the comments that we received were related around I want to make sure my kids have feel safe to you know to visit the parks and the you know outdoor spaces that we have or a feeling of safety so that my child can ride his or her bike down the street in the neighborhood. I don't have to worry about them and so that's why it came up in the vision themes that way. Um, the vision themes help to inform the vision statement. So, moving forward, these themes, they kind of fall away because they get folded into the official tagline in the statement. So, the themes off to the side help to show how the input from community members influenced the resulting statement.

Not seeing any other questions. Okay,

proceed, please. So, I'm going to move over to our values um slide here. Um so, here you can see uh the five values uh that are being recommended under the strategic plan. Um and as Ashley mentioned earlier, the values are a little bit different, right? They reflect the community, but really they're largely used day-to-day to determine how um staff operates, interacts with each other, interacts with the public, and how we design the programs and processes that we ultimately um you know introduce to the public and bring and recommend to council. Um, so there was an extensive outreach process done um around the values with staff uh specifically doing focus groups with both our frontline excuse me with our frontline staff, our middle managers who typically do not get included in those processes um as well as our executive leadership team and we also did a general citywide um survey for staff. And the reason we did that is we really wanted to focus in on how can these be useful for you. Uh we heard a lot of feedback coming out of the last plan um that one we had far too many values um and it they were difficult for people to remember to understand and recognize how they interacted with each other. Um but we also went through an exercise where we actually walked through how do these values show up in practice? What does it look like when you are behaving in an innovative way when you're acting as a good steward? And what does it look like when you're not? Um and that was very helpful uh and insightful from staff. it actually resulted in some adjustments from the last time that you saw these values. Um so you will see um where stewardship and innovation had been kind of combined in one statement in the prior. Um we heard from staff that that was a very important distinction there um because in prior iterations stewardship while wonderful um and something that they definitely valued um sometimes construed into a space where they felt like they couldn't innovate or they had to keep things status quo um and that they could not take risks to move forward um in advance areas. Um, another area um that we heard strongly from uh them was

collaboration. That was probably the most commented uh value coming out of staff. Really recognizing the fact that there are a lot of areas where as we grow as a city, if we make sure that we are communicating, working together, um we can better um address those resources and provide more efficient processes and more quality services for residents. Um so there was a pretty extensive process there. And then believe next slide is you Ashley. Sorry I was on mute. Yes. And so thank you for sharing about those values. So now this slide shows the um the five vision areas. And so again, taking directly from the input that we received from the community, um these uh these main theme priority areas uh that emerged from the outreach really focused into these five key areas. So reliable and sustainable infrastructure, healthy economy, safe and resilient community, excuse me, connected and engaged community, and a high performing government. Okay, I think I think you're Yep.

I'm sorry. I'll pass to you.

Um, so before I start going through reliable and sustainable infrastructure, I'm going to give a lay of the land for the next couple slides. Um, because I'm going to follow a pretty similar format and I'm going to pre-warn you that a lot of these are intertwined with each other. Um, so we are going to go through these um, and then we will stop at the end of the uh, five vision areas to make sure that we can check in and get feedback from you. Um I will say u we are going to largely focus on the vision area the specific goals and we will talk through some measures of success and some highlights from the objectives but we do have everything right here. Um so if we don't cover one that you were curious about didn't understand um had questions um we can certainly address those as well.

Before you get started does council need a bio break? Anybody need a bio break? Thank you.

Okay. Um, so sorry, lost my train of thought there. Um, so first of all, we're going to start with one that is a little bit of a heavy hitter here, and that is our reliable and sustainable infrastructure. And the reason I call it our heavy hitter is because this really draws upon two of the major themes that we heard um from that public feedback. Um, so you talked a little bit earlier, Council Member Newton, about that anxiety and fear that you heard around particularly the growth in infrastructure piece, and that is a piece that we heard as well. Uh, one of the key things though in a strategic plan is we have to take that moment of going through and understanding that frustration and then move from that frustration and anxiety into how do we start implementing solutions, moving forward and getting to a space where people can feel more comfortable about or enjoy and love that space that they're living in. Um so this area is really looking to address um that frustration among residents um that we are not able to take care of existing infrastructure um today and also being proactive enough and are also not in their perception being proactive enough in addressing infrastructure needs as we grow. Additionally we tried to weave through um this loss of Alby's small town feel. We heard that repeatedly um through the feedback and as we understand um Albany is a growing city, right? We've had that conversation multiple times um that you know at 60,000 residents that's a that's a firmly medium-sized city by national standards, large city by Oregon standards. Um so how do you start to balance this fact that Albany is growing with preserving that small town feel? Um so you're going to see here um the overall vision area reliable and sustainable infrastructure. Um, Albany is committed to strategic infrastructure planning. So, again, starting to look ahead, that more proactive approach, ensuring assets are well-maintained, dependable, and able to support the city's future needs. And then you can see under there that we have outlined goals um that really align with that cohesive vision. I'll talk in a moment about why that's important. Um, ensuring

safe, reliable, and well-maintained infrastructure. And then finally, establishing a strategic, sustainable infrastructure funding plan. Um because as we all know, one of the biggest barriers to that infrastructure maintenance right now is that ability to fund not only what we have today um but what we will need in the future. So moving to this next slide, we're going to talk a little bit about measures of success and we'll also talk about objectives on this slide. Um so I want to uh go over a little bit measures of success because this is a new concept that we have not had in prior plans. Um, so there was the question earlier in regards to how do we know if we're moving forward being successful and the answer is we haven't really known in the past because we haven't always had that data being looked at, being trended and had that data available. Um, so a key piece of this strategic planning process was really to sit down um, look at those vision areas, look at those goals and look at what is the data that we have available to us or that we can reasonably get um, in order to start looking at that success. So you're going to see here a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data. Um anywhere where you see that percent of survey respondents, that is data that is coming from that community survey. So if you'll remember, um back in um I believe it was the fall, you heard the results from that national uh survey that PCO does for us. Um we have historically done that survey and it's gone and sat on a shelf. it is now being intertwined into the strategic plan to help us understand are the objectives that we are implementing and the goals that we're moving forward actually having the outcomes and impacts for residents that we are hoping to see. So you can see those there. Um and then you can also like I said see some of those quantitative ones. You'll think see things like average time uh travel time on key corridors really getting towards that um anxiety piece around traffic. Um and then also you're going to see in there some engagement spaces around comprehensive plan. Um because that is going to be a major objective and actually the first one I'm going to

highlight for you. Um so talking through this idea of how do we how do we start to strategically plan for infrastructure growth um here in the city of Albany as well as balance that idea of small town character. And what that was a pretty extensive conversation, probably the longest conversation um that staff had during that uh that uh facilitation. And really what we kept coming back to is the comprehensive plan for the city of Albany. So for those of you who are not familiar with the comprehensive plan, that is the largest land use document that the city uh uh creates. We created it in 1980 and we have not done a major update of it since 1980. For reference, the city of Albany had a population of 24,000 in 1980. That is a far cry from where we sit today. And it is typical that most cities will update in full that plan every 10 to 15 years. The reason for that being the infrastructure needs change, the population distribution changes, and really what the population and the community wants changes over that time. And as we started to go through this gets to are there items that are being left intentionally vague here? And the answer is yes. When we started getting into the specifics of what are some of the actionable items that we can implement or recommend to council um for addressing these two uh key concerns we've heard, we realized we didn't have an a a good understanding of what the community wanted from a land use perspective. We started to hear it here in the strategic plan, but the strategic plan is at a 50,000 foot level when it comes to land use. This is a space where a robust uh comprehensive plan will allow us to have those very real conversations around what does balanced housing look like for you? What does it look like for you to have a connected neighborhood? What does it look like um in terms of housing that you want to see? What does it look like in terms of how you want to see the land down the street from you used moving forward? And how does that all tie into what does it

mean to live in Albany? And what is the Alb what is the identity for the city of Albany? Um so that is the first uh major objective I want to highlight from here. In addition I want to highlight our transportation systems plan. Um so historically that is largely focused on roads. Uh this time around uh we are going to look at incorporating uh mobility and transit as part of that plan. Um because one thing that we heard was people wanted to feel more connected within their neighborhoods. They wanted options that didn't require them to sit in traffic um to move uh between their neighbors, get to those events, get to those parks. Um and then finally, uh the redesign of the CIP process. Um so as we were going through this and really talking through why have we not been able to, um utilize some of these resources, um and move forward some of these major projects, um it really came back to there have been a lot of silos in regards to preparation of our um capital improvement plan. Um, so we're really going to be looking at that process as part of um, this strategic planning period in order to look for opportunities for leveraging off of each other. Can we move an item forward that has to do with the building of a park in order to take advantage of a roadway that's being worked on in that area. Um, so that's a very key piece there to help the resources and funding go further. Looking ahead to healthy economy, this is the one vision area that carried forward from the last strategic plan. But I am going to note very quickly that this does not look the same as it did in that prior strategic plan. As you'll notice here, there are is a strong connection being made around the vibrancy of downtown as well as the role that affordable housing plays in the ability for um Albany to have a healthy economy. It's not only about the jobs. It's about being able to have the workers here. It's about being able um we heard quite a bit about people wanting to make sure that their children that their family um could purchase in

Albany and live in the place that they work. Um so here you'll see there's goals around strengthen Alby's economic base um by attracting and retaining a diverse mix of industries. That's a pull forward from the prior strategic plan. Uh but then you also see this emphasis on small business growth, expanding those housing opportunities, that downtown vibrancy I just mentioned, and then our role as a regional economic hub. So how does that play into measures of success um and into some of those highlight objectives? Um so here again, you're going to see that mix of qualitative and quantitative um objectives or excuse me, measures of success. uh really pulling um from some of the data that we are are tracking through our economic development team to help us understand um the movement of businesses um within the community um but also pulling from those uh survey results the areas around affordable housing. And the reason you see us pulling from there is because to this point we have not had good data around affordable housing. And that is actually going to lead me to my first objective I'm going to highlight um which is that you will see in there the objectives around um completing that housing inventory. And then there's also in the prior vision area um the strategies that go alongside that. Part of doing that inventory and and putting together those strategies is allowing us to understand what it is that we do need to be measuring and how we can measure those how we can incorporate that into the process. Um that is also a highlight one because again this is an area where we were intentionally vague. Um because the expectation is that those uh that objective and completion of those objectives will result in additional objectives um being recommended to council at the first um update of this plan. So just want to highlight that. Um next I did want to bring attention um to the objective around small business support for small business development organizations. um that is very specifically addressed um at the uh small business development center at

Lynbenton Community College. If you'll remember uh we did hear uh that they would no longer due to funding issues uh be hosting that on-site at that facility. That has been something that has been heavily used by our small business community um here in Albany. And it's actually um the ability for people to actually go in in person has been a significant strength for us in being able to maintain um having such a vibrant downtown um and a lot of these unique businesses uh here in the community. Um that being said, uh that objective was placed in there to um allocate staff time to be able to start looking at what are some other opportunities. As of right now, those services will continue in a virtual format at the state level. Um, but based on what we heard from our residents, we value those small businesses and so we want to make sure that we can look at other opportunities for people to access that in a similar way. Safe and resilient community. Uh, this is our public safety one. But what I would like to draw attention to here is it's not public safety in the traditional sense. Right? If you look at it, it does carry forward those police and fire aspects that we've historically seen in the strategic plan, but it also starts to interweave uh cyber security, which has become an increasingly significant risk uh for the city. Uh so much of our infrastructure is tied to networks, everything from the way our water treatment plant runs um to just the day-to-day operations being able to process a permit. Um, additionally, we've started to look at based on that feedback, we really heard a lot of the safety concerns being around um some some particular areas within the community. So, specifically within neighborhoods and in parks and trails. Um, so you're going to see in the objectives that we start to focus in on things like how do we design and how do we bring in lighting in order to make an environment that feels more inviting and is safer um for for residents to traverse. So not just simply um that traditional public safety looking at the measures of success there are quite a few here and I'm going to

point out that this is largely because historically this is the area that has been primarily uh the focus of our prior strategic plans. So because the strategic plan drives budget decisions and recommendations um there has been a lot of resourcing placed into safe and resilient community and as such there's been more opportunity for uh measures and data to be taken in this area. Um that being said our hope is that we will be able to address that in a lot of our other vision areas as well. Um but while I'm here and I apologize I didn't keep up with my uh flipping of pages here. A couple highlight objectives I wanted to to show. um completion of the fire standards of coverage and feasibility study uh that has uh recently kicked off. If you'll remember um this was a discussion point following um the new contract for our uh fire uh union this year. Um really looking at how do we what are the standards of service we need not just today but long term. So looking at that growth space, what is that going to cost the city to maintain and what are the options for getting there? um whether that be through revenues, changes in service levels or the possibility of a district. Um and then you will also see under here the increase the number of security cameras in parks and trails as well as addressing lighting gaps. Um this is an area where we've gotten very creative. um we have been able to look at data again data being very very important um to look at leveraging opioid uh funds in order to help get additional uh security measures into some particular parks and trails where we've had a lot of problematic activity. Um so that is something new that we have not um been able to do before. And then finally um implement a vision zero plan. I want to highlight that one because while this is something that is pretty common across the nation I we have not had it here in Albany. And this is really a plan that is focused on how do we eliminate um traffic fatalities within the city. And the reason this is so important is completing a plan like this comes with a lot of opportunity for state and federal

funding that we have not been able to tap thus far. Um and by uh being able to do that, our hope is that not only can we address this safe and resilient community piece, we can also address some of that sustainable um infrastructure as well. connected and engaged community. I am going to say I'm personally very excited for this one um because this is an area that has not been highlighted in our prior strategic plans. This is very much the quality of life aspect of this strategic plan and really reflects a shift that we saw in u the community feedback um this time around and really um also incorporates this desire we heard for more regular feedback, incorporation and engagement. Um alongside uh the uh sustainable infrastructure I mentioned earlier, uh this vision area does also play to that small town feel where the infrastructure side was very much the physical aspects of how do you keep a uh city feeling small even as it grows. This uh particular vision area addresses the human aspect of that. How do you connect? How do you engage with your neighbors? How do you interact with people? What makes it feel special to be a member of the community of Albany? Um so moving over here to the measures of success you can see and this reflects the fact that this is an area that we have historically not resourced. Um there are fewer measures of success here and that's simply because we don't have the data available yet. Um and that is a space where we will be working on what are the types of things that we can measure what are the types of things that we can can look at. That being said I do want to draw your attention to a couple of ones where we got very creative. Um so for example you'll see there number of active community user cards issued at the library. that is actually a measure to help us understand the touch points we are having with the homeless community. Those cards are actually issued largely to our transplant population um and that you may have seen in the objectives that there is a space in there around um increasing partnerships and touch points

in the library um with that population. So that is a creative use where we have not historically had good measures, good data and we went how can we still see is this moving forward so that you have you're not left with zero information while we are trying to put some of those other uh areas in place. Um some other objectives I want to pull attention to. Uh very exciting one. Um I know our parks director is thrilled about this one. Uh you might have noticed that we called the update to the parks and recreation master plan the a update to the parks recreation and cultural master plan. Um, we heard considerable feedback around how do you make it a more beautiful community? Um, so that includes things like public art, uh, placemaking, really those things that we have also heard, um, from council over the past year. And one of the great ways that you can start to incorporate that, um, is really doing it as part of your capital projects and in your plans up front. It is much cheaper to do it that way. and much uh we we tend to be able to uh leverage other grant dollars that we would not otherwise be able to if it was specifically a placemaking or an art project. Additionally, um we have an upgrade to the city's website. Uh one of the major conversations over the last year and after reading really through the feedback that we received um is that people want to be able to access information in an easy way. They want to be able to connect and interact with the city. Um, that being said, while our website does function today, it's not a great reflection of that. It's very difficult to find things on there. Um, and quite frankly, the back end of it is worse than what you see. It is a very it is a very manual process to update update that which means it all bottlenecks in to people in the organization. Um, so we are uh recommending an objective to upgrade the city's website to a platform that will allow us to diversify who throughout the organization can update that while still allowing um for some checks and balances there in order to allow information to

be shared more quickly with residents. Also, it would address the ADA uh compliance issue. And then finally, um explore implementation of a community court program. This is an exciting one as well. Uh community court programs are programs that take low-level um infractions and um rather than sending them through the traditional court system um it actually helps to look at what is the root cause behind something and help to connect people with services that can make them more successful community members uh moving forward. And then finally um high performing government. Um this is the one that I have been uh personally referring to as sort of the uh people and framework uh vision area largely because this is the behind the scenes uh pieces that will stand up and allow us to move forward all of those other vision areas. Um so you're going to see here there's a focus on the systems, the processes and the resourcing um that needs to happen in order to make uh city operations successful. Um so this includes everything from process improvement uh to skilled uh to having a skilled workforce that is capable of delivering um the level of services that our residents have come to expect and deserve. Um as well as addressing those data gaps I mentioned earlier. There's some objectives in there around excuse me identifying where those specific data gaps are and how we begin to address those so that you as council can be provided better information in order to make your decisions moving forward. Here you can see uh those measures of success um crossing that staffing resource and process improvement areas. Um some highlight objectives that I do want to uh pull out. Um so we do have the Albany way training that is included in there. One of the key conversations we had throughout this process is we are asking for a fundamental shift in how the city operates to be more future focused. We need to make sure that staff is equipped with the training, understanding and

knowledge to be able to deliver on that as well as an understanding in the shift of the uh values, mission, and vision um to to council's new priorities. Additionally, um an exciting one is an objective around a shared operations campus between public works, parks, and facilities. Uh so right now those groups are spread across three uh different campuses all of which require and are in desperate need of updates and um um quite frankly repair. Um, and rather than looking at those as three individual spaces, knowing that they use a lot of the same equipment, that a lot of their work overlaps, we instead want to look at the current public works site as a potential shared space between those groups to improve collaboration, efficiency, and quite frankly allow us to move forward without spending um as much of the city's resources. And then finally, I'm going to actually group several objectives in one general theme, which is that theme of AI that you see through there. Uh AI is quite frankly uh becoming a significant tool um throughout life quite frankly um and we are seeing more and more of that integrated into um the services and technology that we utilize day-to-day here at the city. As part of that though um there comes a need to balance the use of AI, the efficiencies it gains with the risks as well as uh the quality of product that is delivered um to our residents and to our staff. Um, and so we included several objectives around there. Um, resulting around AI governance, how that rolls out and how it implements and how we integrate it into our day-to-day activities. Um, so with that being said, I'm going to take a pause here as promised. I'm sure there are a lot of questions um, in regards to this section. Um, so I'm going to turn that over for questions.

Council Council Thompson.

Yeah. Um, difficult difficult endeavor. I I respect the challenge because I went through roughly uh the the 1500 replies and people make contradictory statements that uh they they want it all. Um so teasing out that is very and so I appreciate that but I also um kind of scoring you know the concepts the the um the feelings of managing growth slowing growth or or well-managed growth um appeared significantly in the replies not overwhelmingly but are not completely but a significant amount. Um in fact we probably a maybe not a over 50% plus one, but a majority of the total. Um, and I see that and kudos to you. That was addressed and touched on in the takeaways, but I just don't see where that's really addressed within the goals. Um, maybe you can highlight that. You know, you did talk about a re a redesign of the CIP process, and I I can get that. That that's a little bit of it, but I just think that was an area that just I didn't see it jump out at me in the goals.

Yeah. So that actually goes back to the conversation we had around um items that were left intentionally vague. Um because that was a pretty significant conversation that we had on the staff side about how do you start to address and execute those pieces and when we were looking through that and discussing that we realized we were missing a key piece of information there um which is really what do Albany residents want as we grow. So that was that conversation around the comprehensive plan. It's my full expectation that once we go through that comprehensive planning process and uh the master planning processes that are associated with it that you are going to see a number of more specific goals that relate to that area. Um we have to balance wanting to make sure we're not just jumping the gun and throwing something out there and trying to assume what residents want when we have not done intentional and good engagement quite frankly since 1980.

Okay, Council Mloud. Um, I think is is my microphone working? How about now? That's better. There we go. Okay. I think it's uh pretty clear that we've heard from our residents um about what they want with with growth and that it's uh less growth or slower growth. And I don't think that's vague at all. Um, I think that when we're talking about um how the city grows, um, to say that to say that the the results are vague from our residents, I don't think that's accurate. Um, can you elaborate on on that?

So, I'm not saying that the results are vague. What I'm saying is we left the objectives intentionally vague to be able to gather more of that specific feedback around what does growth look like? Um because absolutely we hear residents who are here in Albany, they love the Albany that they have today. We also hear from residents in that feedback that they want their families to be able to live here. They want to be able to have affordable housing here for them. And and that does come with an element of growth in relation to it. We also know that we have in the pipeline a number of developments that even if we said today as a city that we are stopping growth, we're not going to approve any new developments, we would still continue to grow for the next 10 years. And so trying to balance how do you start to talk about that and how do you make that um strategic and reflect the pieces that that they value about the Albany today is really where that comprehensive planning piece comes in. So not saying that they're vague on that, just trying to recognize some of those pieces. Absolutely.

So, I think that maybe there's something um that could have been different about the way the questions were asked in that um you asked what does growth look like and um the responses are seeming to say um we don't want to know what growth looks like because we don't want growth. And so it seems like with the responses that we're getting, there's a little bit of push back. And so, um, maybe that those types of questions could have been phrased a little differently in the, um, in the questionnaires.

And to be fair, I I don't specifically remember how we had the the questions phrased. I know that there were probably seven of them that were around um, how does development, how does growth, what does the future of Albany look like? Um, but I I couldn't speak to I don't remember the specifics of of the phrasing on those. But again, that gets to a space where when we talk about the comprehensive plan, we incorporated in that uh proposal a very significant emphasis on community engagement on that one. Um, we're talking a monthslong process in relation to community engagement throughout that. um and quite frankly at at several touch points and that is because you can have that ability to get much more specific and hear those very uh detailed responses uh from residents in that that space. Some of the specific resident feedback that I heard um around the survey was that uh the questions were a little bit skewed um and that they um they were having difficulty uh answering the questions because in some portions of the survey it was it was to for example rank um a certain number of things in in order that it that they um wanted them and it felt like some of the feedback I got from residents was that well they don't want they don't want some of those things but to rank it at the bottom or maybe second or third from the bottom is still ranking it kind of higher than they wanted it. Um so u maybe we need to look at a little different format of the um of the questionnaire in the future.

Yeah, fair fair assessment. I don't know Ashley if you have anything that you want to add to that. Staff actually didn't develop the questions. So, okay. Or if we just want to take that moving forward. Ashley, you are muted. I'm looking at a very small box of her here.

Oh, thank you. I can speak to this to the survey design a little bit. The the idea with the survey is that we offer a variety of questions. Some are open-ended and then some are some are ranking. Um, some have multiple choice, some are checkboxes and we do that intentionally to be able to collect different types of input and also um it would be really laborious for community members to have all open-ended questions. Um, that being said, when we conducted the analysis of all of the comments, we're looking specifically at what residents put in the open-ended questions to determine the themes of what they want. the information with ranking. That's like a subcategory of like in helpful information to look at, but it what those weren't the driving pieces that um that influenced the development of the goals or the or the supporting objectives.

Thank you. Okay. Councelors, Council Smith,

couple of things. I was part of that um population of 25 to 27,000 in 1980 when the comp plan was put together. So I appreciate the um effort to update it. Albany is a different place. Albany is still the same place that I moved to, however, in that it's a place that people want to live and you walk out your front door and you find a friend and it's easy to get around if you live on this side of the river. Um but that's a different matter. Um I think addressing the issue of skewed questions um I think the way people read the answers. It also you you're you're looking at the answers through your own lenses. And I I looked through the answers, not all of them. I trusted the summaries in the in the report. But what I saw and what I what I was hearing in the verbal report this evening is the number one issue for the people I hear from and certainly in most of the places I go is terrible streets that rises to the top. It's risen to the top. It's here for everybody to see. People want us to fix our streets. that is infrastructure. And so keep that in mind as we continue our discussions later today and as this plan progresses. This is so different from the original Albany strategic plan for 2007. It's clear that people are thinking forward. Um that they that we

are adapting to the world, the changing world we live in, the rapidly changing world and assessing things on the fly and planning for the future. I think it's incorrect to say that we are not planning our infrastructure to keep up with what's happening. A lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes that people don't see. Public works is the the biggest department in that we have. They do all the work that people don't think about. They don't want to think about it. They don't want to think about what happens when you flush or what happens when you turn the tap on, the water comes out. That's we're constantly planning to keep up with replacing things that are wearing out, making sure they last longer, making sure we get the best deal, that they serve the most people and the most efficiently. That kind of planning goes on all the time. I don't know if it's keep I I see it keeping up with what's happening. And I can't put a stop to growth in Albany. I could move away, but that's one person Um, and that's that's a a really basic, probably ridiculous thing to say, but I don't know how we stop people from wanting to build here, wanting to do business here, wanting to live here when we love it as much as we do. And we tell our friends and we it's it's going to happen. It's going to happen. And here we have a roadmap for taking care of it in a systematic way, in a way that is flexible that can change over time. It's um as I've said so many times, people are sick of hearing it. Albany has grown up since I moved here, since all of us moved here. Really, if even if you've only been here for a couple of years, it's a different place. It's grown up and this plan has grown up to

reflect that in a way that I never dreamed possible. I This is really stunning. Um these are good changes. They're they're changes that can be changed and they are it's very very thoughtful. Um and I think I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to both the both Terra Singh and Wilson's people and to Kayla and the staff that worked on this. I know it's hard. The first pass of this was in uh was my original plan of things to get started and it happened and I'm glad that we're reviewing it every four years because I think future councils will also make their adjustments as we move forward and I'm excited about it. I think it's great and when I go over this plan, the previous plan with the young people at our schools, they have they have no idea and they go home and share that with their parents and their parents get excited about and they call me and say, "Can I like to talk to you about this section?" And so when that engagement happens, um, it's educating more people in the community because they talk to their friends and they talk to their friends and it gets around when I have four high school kids sitting looking at our strategic plan on their phones. You see this? The mayor showed us this and I I think that the strategic plan is a document that people can refer to if they have questions about it. They can send us a form, a contact form, and people do that. And I think that um this is a good good plan. I think I only issue I had was the housing wasn't as elevated as I I would like. But that's just me. That's my my thing is housing affordability. But I got a phone call from a client. She's in her 80s and she called me and she was really happy. One of her grandchildren bought a home out at Metal Art and she's moving back here from California. You know, she's bringing babies with her, right? Other places are closing schools and we got people moving here with babies. I was at the farmers market list last weekend and I got trapped amongst 15

strollers of these babies and every one of them lived in the city of Albony, Oregon. That's a really good sign. So, thank you for the work on this staff. Thank you for the work on this council. Thank you for Sarah Single Wilson's people. Um, you can go ahead and continue if there's more. I do have a question, mayor. Sorry. Go ahead, please.

Excuse me. I just wanted to say that I think um wanted to echo what councelor Smith said. I think that um it's a compliment to us that people do want to come here, build, live, work, pay, do business, etc. My question is um Kayla, you mentioned that the city is becoming or trying to become more future focused and I guess technology based. I do have a question about how are we doing that for our residents. Um obviously our some of our academic institutions in this community is no longer providing you know like community education or it's been scaled back and if we're becoming more future focused as a city I would hate for our residents to be left behind in that aspect. So is there anything that we see or could do coming up the pike to help to um navigate them through that process? I'm going to be honest with you. I don't have anything that comes top of mind for me. When I was talking about being future focused, I was really talking about the services that the city provides. Um, but certainly if that's a broader topic that the council wants to pursue, um, that's the type of visionary um, discussion that that is ripe for this type of of document.

Thank you, counselor. Next step, please. Kayla, do you mind if I Yeah. I wanted to address a question that came up earlier before we go into the implementation. Yep.

Um there there were some comments made around the um since I I was the one that analyzed all of the data um that came up around the um anti-growth or you know um concerns around growth. And I I want to just make clear uh for for council and for for folks that who are tuning in um that this particular issue was really split in the data. There was definitely a a strong um portion of the data that was asking for to you know slow the growth um please you know stop the high density housing. Um so that was very clear and there's also a subset of the strong subset of the data of um folks that are asking for you know more opportunities for affordable or or really accessible housing um opportunities. Um that also shows up in um a desire for increased uh house um uh job opportunities for living wage jobs. So people are looking for increased housing opportunities, increased job opportunities. It also showed up on how people want to um to shop and access amenities. There um there was a a sub theme that that came up where people were asking um for more amenities within the city. Like I want to be able to live in Albany and get all of my needs met here and not have to drive elsewhere and like be able to spend my tax dollars here. Um and so um this was this particular um issue that came up. there's really these two sides of the data and we explored those as a team and with staff at length and so I think as Kayla spoke to um the need to have flexibility in the plan and ga and and dig a little bit deeper and conduct more significant community outreach that reaches even more folks and can hear well what does that specifically mean to you will be really valuable um in this

process. So I just wanted to make those comments before you you move on. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley.

Okay. Um, so now I'm gonna move us into the implementation system. So, how do we uh move forward like advance this time? Okay. Um, and so here you can see a road map of kind of the next four years in relation to this plan. Um, and I am going to make a little bit of a correction to to a comment the mayor made uh just a moment ago around, you know, we update this plan every four years. Um really we've been very intentional in the planning process this this time around to make sure that there are touch points and flexibility built into this process. So do we don't feel like we have this document that is immovable for the next four years. Um when things the environment the information available to us is changing. Um that being said um one of the biggest uh areas that a uh strategic plan can fail is if it becomes you know too flexible that it's no longer a plan. Um but also on the flip side of that um if it becomes too firm that it cannot adjust. Um so here you see um just for orientation year one um that assumes a start of July 1, 2026. But I will tell you if there are areas of opportunity um we will get started on those ahead of that July 1 date. Um and that is very much focused on an implementation year. Um really starting to get this woven through those uh work plans that dictate the day-to-day activities of our departments. Um, you're also going to see during this um, a strategic plan website and dashboard go live. I got to see a preview of it um, from Matt Harrington today and it's going to feel very different um, from what our residents are used to encountering on our website. Uh, much more user friendly, much more storytelling oriented to help them understand what this plan does and what it is um, going to uh, how it's moving forward. Um, and then also this is going to be a big year because believe it or not, um, budget process kicks off um, in just a couple months. I know it's hard to believe that, but it's a nine-month process. Um, and so um, you're going to start seeing this be part of that conversation. Um, and then year two um,

you'll see that built in uh, with a check-in year. We've got the surveying happening um, for Poco um, as well as council discussion and work plan adjustments based on that that budget. So again, building in that flexibility piece. Uh year three very very similar to year one and then year four is that big holistic update. Um we do have uh touch points built into every year uh through the annual report. Um as well as strategic plan updates occurring on the quarterly basis. They are going to get rolled into uh the financial quarterly financial update that has been introduced to you. Um and that is to further emphasize this relationship between the broader vision um and goals that are set by council and how resourcing uh plays into that execution. And then finally, this is a slide you've seen before. You saw it during the budget process. Uh uh Sarah's group just made it uh prettier with some graphic design here. Um but just a reminder of that strategic budgeting cycle. Um because that is going to be the next sort of big touch point you see on this. Uh we have over the last several months been in that green engaged space. Um we are now in that planning space. Um, and then you're going to see us moving into over the next few months that budgeting space. So, how does this look uh and show up in terms of resourcing? How does this play through those long-term financial models? And how do we make this happen? Um, and with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ashley for our final slide. Thank you. All right, next steps. Where do we go from here? You've heard um a lot of information tonight around the engagement, how that showed up in the resulting plan and how the plan's going to be implemented and updated and used over time. Um and so thinking about next steps from where we go tonight, um over the past uh uh week or two, um between May 4th and the 13th, we hosted a community review period of the draft

strategic plan. Um, we hosted the draft strategic plan on the city's website and then pushed out a variety of of messaging to the community to inviting them to review the plan and to complete a quick survey to be able to share share their thoughts and feedback on that plan. So, we have been going through those comments. Uh, we received I think roughly 30 31 survey responses and one email response with comments. Um, and so checking in to see if there's any priorities that we missed or anything that we missed or if something wasn't accurately reflected in the plan. And so we've been going through uh those comments together as a team and then we'll um use that information to incorporate the feedback that we did receive um into the final version of the strategic plan that will come to the to the council for your consideration to adopt on uh May 27th. And just a couple couple comments about what we've heard most um in those comments. Um just a you know a desire to see a stronger need to address h homelessness um affordable housing, street maintenance, traffic safety, and a desire for more public transportation. Those were kind of the key things that came up from those um from those 30 comments that we did receive. And so uh given those comments, we had discussion internally as a project team about how to um how to really provide additional context to how the um how the plan is going to be addressing those things. It's as you've seen tonight uh just with the um all of the amazing examples um that provided additional context that Kayla provided into what um just those highlighting highlighting some of those tactical objectives and like what does that really look like and how could that move the needle and and what's the potential impact there. There's a lot of context that goes into that that you it's difficult to capture in a single sentence of what that objective is. And

so because of that, we're adding a few pages into the strategic plan that are narrative focused that really address those top concerns that we received and explain um what the city is going to be doing um to be able to address those through the strategic plan. So you heard earlier Kayla mention comprehensive plan uh you know trans uh transportation system plan and other planning efforts um exp and explaining how those all fold into that broader conversation around growth in the city what that looks like and and how that's going to show up over time. So there's a section that's specifically focused on growth. Um, and then there's also a section specifically focused on the complexities of of homelessness and how the city is working with um, regional partners um, and in in a variety of different ways and using different um, tools and methods to be able to uh, uh, create spaces that feel safe and accessible to all while uh, doing the the best that the city can to be able to connect folks with resources um, so that they can be um, they they can have the access to those resources as well. So know that there are uh the version that's going to be coming uh later will have that additional context and hopefully that helps helps to um you know further strengthen those connections between what we heard in the community outreach and the resulting strategic plan and hopefully encourage people to continue to stay engaged because there's again more opportunities for um community input as these other plans are developed and explored.

Thank you. Thank you. Councelor Mloud has a question or a comment.

Thank you. Um Kayla, recently you asked us to um share a link to the um to the draft survey or I'm sorry to the to the draft plan and um um ask people to fill out a survey. Um I think this was last week and um some of the feedback that I received from the community was that it was uh it was difficult for them uh to to be asked to review a 36-page document uh before filling out a survey. um and that it it um it was quite timeconsuming and and that it was um difficult to ask members of the community to to do that. Um I I I was then told by um someone in the civic academy that they received a um a two-page briefing on the

on the um Yeah. Yeah. So, we had the social media post that went out and that was framed for social media. And I will say specifically, we point to the full survey or excuse me, to the full plan um because we are looking for specific feedback on those objectives. Okay. And as you saw, there's a lot of them in there. Um it is impossible to fit those objectives into two pages or a page. Um that being said, the flyer you're referring to is the flyer that we actually put out at our counters and across city facilities. Okay. Um and so that was the sort of in-person medium that we had as well. Okay.

Um just trying to hit based on the different um you know medium. Um that being said um we actually um uh Matt Harrington our our communications manager he is absolutely wonderful. He built this in such a way um that we are going to be very easily able to switch out this QR code to the new uh website and and transparency portal for the strategic plan. Um and then people you will have that to be able to distribute so that you have this very quick reference on the goals but they can also link out and see that more detailed information. So um we made this intentionally one that is easy to pivot to the implementation side.

Great. The um I I just wanted to highlight that the um the the specific feedback that I received was that it was it was like hey uh look at this thing and fill out this survey and then they click it and it's 36 pages before you even get to the homework. Yeah. before you even get to the survey, it's read these 36 pages. So, that was a little a little offputting to a lot of the people that um that got back to me on it. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Good point. We don't have anything else from our presentation. So, if you guys are good with your uh questions, comments, um we will take that feedback back and we will be back in just a few weeks with that updated version. Thank you very much. Well done. Good job, staff.

Sarah Single Wilson, spokes. Ashley, thank you. Okay. Um my goodness, there's a lot going on today. Okay. Next, uh before we do public comment, I'm going to take a 10-minute break. Let's let's make a 10-minute break. Be back at 7:57. Be actually 13 minute. Be back at 8 o'clock. Thank you.

Thank you for your patience with us. We'll go and reconvene the meeting at 8:00 on Wednesday, March May 13th. Next on tonight's agenda is public comment. Public comment is a time for Albony residents to speak and for councils to listen. The council won't discuss topics or make decisions during public comment, but will take comments and requests under advisement. Speakers are limited to three minutes and must follow the council's rules and observe the same standards of the quorum. If unable to do so, they'll be asked to step down and take a seat in the audience for the rest of the meeting. When you get to the microphone, please give your name and state whether or not you live in the city of Albany. and council. We did have some public comment that was written on the DIA. Did you get a chance to take a look at that? Thank you very much for that. First up is Matthew Van Bimmo. Hello, my name is Matthew Van Bemel and I am a citizen of Albany. Um, good evening, mayor and members of the Albany City Council. Um, and my name is Matthew Van Beml and I'm here to talk today about uh to ask the city to address the railroad crossing between Queen Avenue and Pacific Boulevard. Um, this crossing is extremely rough and difficult to drive over. There are multiple large bumps and drivers have to cross four railroad tracks at the same time. Um, even when I slow down as much as possible, the crossing causes a severe jolt to my body. I am disabled and the condition of this crossing causes me real physical harm every day. Every time I drive over those tracks, it hurts my

back and aggravates my body. The impact is strong enough that going over the crossing feels like being on a roller coaster. And if I wanted to put my body through that kind of punishment, I would go ride an actual roller coaster. But this is not an amusement park ride. This is a public roadway that disabled residents rely on every single day. For many people, this crossing may simply feel rough or uncomfortable. But for people with disabilities, chronic pain, spinal problems, mobility, mobility limitations, or other medical conditions, it can be physically painful and harmful. Something as routine as driving across the town should not be an uh an experience that causes anxiety about pain. I recently contacted ODOT project manager Jim Dole regarding this crossing. He informed me that the larger crossing project is not even expected to begin until 2029. Um, and he has passed my concerns though along to O. Rail as well. Uh, but for disabled residents, 2029 is a long time away. That means years of daily pain for people who have no choice but to use this road. That's why I'm asking the Albany City Council not only to support repairs to this crossing, but also to actively pressure ODOT rail to address the disability impacts of this crossing sooner rather than later. I also asked the city to advocate to the railroad company that owns the land and the tracks to pursue quicker repairs or improvement for the ADA and disabled community. Accessibility is not only about ramps and sidewalks. It is also about making sure public infrastructure can safely be used by everyone, including disabled residents whose bodies are more vulnerable to harsh impacts and uneven roadways. I appreciate the work that the council does for the community and I hope that you will consider the real physical impact that this crossing has on people like me and others in Albany who live with disabilities every day. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next is Brian Bristo. Uh hello, I'm Brian Bristo. I'm a resident of Albany. Um you know, a comment about the airport presentation is between Aurora and Eugene, we're kind of a unique airport in that we have several hotels and two restaurants accessible through um security doors in the fence. You know, I'm just thinking I think Salem, you'd probably have to walk half a mile to the closest uh hotel and Eugene doesn't have anything on the airport. And you know, it's just a unique thing about our airport.

Thank you,

Brett Kaiser. Council Mayor. Thank you. Brett Kaiser. I am an Albany resident. I've been here my whole life. I was born in Albany and made my first solo flight at the Albany airport when I was a junior in high school. I would just like to urge the council and the mayor to keep an open mind about what an asset the Albany airport is to the city of Albany. I've been to a lot of airports during my flying career and Albany is a really really nice airport and as far as future growth of the city of Albany, I think that the airport is a significant asset for future growth, business, things of that nature. And u that's basically all I got to say. Just keep an open mind and realize what an asset it is and you've already got it. You own it, it's paid for. It may cost a little bit of money from time to time, but city parks cost money, too. So, it's an awesome asset from my perspective.

Thank you. Thank you, Brent. Yep.

Next up is Mel Hoffman. Hopefully this doesn't reflect my marine voice. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. As chair of the airport advisory commission, I wish to convey the commission's support and concurrence with Mr. Trumpino's submission in tonight's agenda. As stated in pages 28 through 30, the airport advisory commission recently met and identified several key points we believe directly impact the projected 200,000 bianial deficit. One, utilizing the historical hanger for multifunctional purposes in addition to the museum aspect. two, retain all existing airport lands within the fence using uh Echo's terms, develop and lease those properties just thus generating revenue to the city via the airport. Identify and develop additional locations around the airport to be utilized for constructing hangers such as southeast, southwest, northwest four redesign or we've understood for several years that the ODOT was wanting to redesign redevelop the uh Santium I5 overpass. We understood they wanted to redevelop and redesign the Knox but I5 frontage road interface and we would encourage the city to

support that proposal, move it towards f fruition which uh would help the airport in the long term. We encourage you to seek additional FAA funding to extend both ends of the runway in conjunction with the redesign, redevelopment of those intersections. Six, plan for the future, prepare the airport properties to be build ready. In other words, put in the drainage, the pavement and seek if at all possible EPA, FAA permitting, etc. Seven, build multiple helipads. This is for fire suppression training, emergency recovery and military training. Eight, look to future technologies. Currently along the I5 corridor, the charging stations for electric vehicles, cars is very limited. Aviation is moving further and further towards aviation or electronics.

Thank you, ma'am. Okay. Can you please provide that to so you can get us a copy of it? Sure.

Thank you. Next up is Luke Drton Dton Dton. Is that right? Thank you. Yes. Hello. Uh my name is Luke Doutton and uh I am I live a little outside of Albany. Um I've had a business here for the last 18 years or so though. And um um when I was younger, I went out to the Albany airport and uh started getting uh learning how to fly out there. And um I've been connected with the airport in one way or another since about 1992. And back then um I w I also worked at uh Reliant Aviation and I my job was to um you know gas up airplanes, that kind of thing. And I ended up getting to know quite a few of the corporate pilots that came and went from Albany back then. Um, and there was I would say there was quite a bit more corporate aircraft activity in the early 90s. Um but um you know what struck me about just based on that experience, what struck me about the report that we that we got from uh Eco Northwest was uh the point about the uh $6 million of economic activity. Um so um it seems to me there's a lot of focus on the deficit which is understandable. Um, that's very important to consider, but I think that that that $6 million of activity could be we could focus on expanding that and attracting more corporate um activity to the airport. Um, and and that way the entire community benefits from the airport

through the the activity that it generates in the community. And so, um, that was just the one thing that that kind of jumped out at me, um, was, uh, there is the, uh, the deficit part of it, but, we should also focus on, um, trying to, uh, attract businesses that will generate activity that benefits everyone economically. So, thank you.

Thank you very much. Next is Jennifer Roi, Ro Simpson Park, and Talking Water Gardens. prefer to stand. Is that okay? We can we can speak to the microphone.

Gotcha. Okay. Um, so I'm Jennifer Ro and I'm here representing Jesus Christ first of all, but I also am trying to be an advocate for a population of the residents of Albany that is very unseen. Um, they are I brought some friends with me as you've noticed. Um, and uh, they were uh, red tagged yesterday and if nobody knows what that means, that means they were evicted from their park. Um and they some of them were given 24 hours to move, some of them two months, some of them two weeks. They're all given different answers. And um we have been uh down at the park for a year and a half. Super the soul. Um that is who what our outreach is. This is my friend Lori. And we have been uh servicing the our homeless friends. And that's the last time I'll call them that down at the park uh by giving them bringing them Jesus and food and different items that they need. We are also trying to be an advocate for them to not enable them but to help them up and out of the park. I've been gathering resources uh throughout the city. We have so many resources in this awesome city of Albany. I love it here. Um and uh but we're not working together well with them. And I'm wondering why we have so many resources and so many homeless people. So, my um I've taken it on myself and God has called me here to be able to put those resources together and help our friends and um I my most urgent need is to wonder why uh if you can give me answers as to why they were evicted from their park, their home and uh um and to re to go on from that. I know I only have a few minutes. Um, in a city of I heard it quoted a couple of times tonight, 60,000 people, there's not one domestic violence shelter here. And some of my friends at the park are there because of domestic violence. People think um drugs, alcohol, when they think

homelessness. That is not so. We have um there's people that are burned out of fires. There's people that have been used all their lives and they have no idea how to live. Nobody's ever taught them. I'm not saying that's on your shoulders, but as a city, I think this should be taken care of. Have anything to add? Um, I'm a lifetime resident of Albany, and one of the things

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Lori Gisler. Um, lifetime resident of Albany. I was born and raised here. Um, one of the things in all your presentations, they kept talking about inclusiveness and welcoming. And I'm embarrassed to say that's not what I get when I when I'm down at the park. people come and they they aren't they aren't welcoming to our friends. They aren't inclusive to those to our friends. Um and they are our friends. I mean, we've been doing this for almost two years and they are amazing people. They have such gifts to offer. We need to work together to find them housing. You talk about affordable housing. They need affordable housing, too. Yes. And that's what we're trying to do.

We love to work together.

Thank you so much for your time. Next on your agenda item is number six isformational briefings, staff reports, local fuel tax discussion, Paul Trombino, pages 203 to 20 210 10. Okay. Can see her.

Here we go.

Sorry. No,

the longer you take, the more questions I'm going to have. Just warning you. I was thinking like this. Take a picture.

Wow. I apologize. Number one. Um, as you can see, I I needed to borrow a computer tonight, so I apologize for this. Um, again, we are here tonight, thank you for the time, um, to share results of the two transportation listening sessions that we held April 1st and April 15th, and to outline some recommended next steps. I also have Bobby Schuler um, from Swift Public Affairs with me to answer any questions you may have about the listening sessions or other items. The sessions uh were facilitated by Swift public affairs and gave us direct unfiltered input from approximately two dozen residents across a range of neighborhoods. Um the memo in your packet summarizes the full discussion um in detail. Our goal tonight is to highlight a key themes that emerged and present some recommendations for your consideration. Hope I can get this to work. Yeah. Um residents expect expressed deep concern about the condition of our roads. Think that was an earlier conversation but this feedback also I think went well beyond just pavement quality. Um we saw a clear geographic disparity in road conditions. Older neighborhoods like Monteth and Hackleman, especially third um through a streets on the Lion side were repeatedly described as horrible while newer developments um across the community are in much better shape. There is als uh there is a trust concern rooted um in past project execution. Um residents cited multiple examples of roads being repaved and then immediately torn up for utility work. We heard a strong management versus funding debate. Some residents viewed that the past uh tw u estimate of $12 million in annual transportation funding deficit as the issue while others uh believe that we

have sufficient resources but need better prioritization, coordination and accountability first. Additionally, uh consistent with themes included heavy vehicle damage from dump trucks, garbage trucks and semi-tra. uh very strong support for preventive maintenance uh communication and transparency gaps and some what I we would call planning fatigue and what we mean by that is the sense that we keep planning and replanning without visible um uh follow through. Overall the community is engaged, cautious uh and pragmatic. Residents care deeply about transportation infrastructure and are open to solution including um new revenue though trust, fairness, visible results um will be decisive. The listening sessions u provide a roadmap and as a result we recommend council direct staff to take the following actions. Uh the communication plan will include plain language, mailed updates and outline uh online dashboard and clear expect explanations of prioritization criteria, project sequencing, especially with utilities, budgets, and pre preventative maintenance, return on investment. For community outreach, we will start by sending direct update to everyone who attended the listening sessions and continue robust engagement as we refine funding strategies and project priorities. The defined project list will prioritize residential street repairs with a special focus on long neglected areas such as Monte and Hacklemen and improve coordination between road and utility work to prevent repeated disruptions. Funding options will include a complete financial strategy. This analysis will include clear data on current capacity versus needs, a defined scope for you

know what transportation funding is uh includes and uh and an enforcable accountability and reporting message so we improve our processes before advancing any new revenue proposals. The funding options analysis staff will be reviewing um the following revenue tool to tools and complimentary strategies. These are being presented as opportunities for consideration while we work through defining specific projects and building a complete financial strategy for all projects. Much of this will be underway shortly as we uh begin uh plans update our maintenance improvement program, our transportation system plan which was discussed earlier, a new safe routes for all or vision zero safety action plan which was also mentioned and an updated capital improvement plan. We will analyze these together with clear data needs versus current capacity and a designed scope scope for funding and strong accountability me measures. So with that, um, we're happy to take any questions you may have.

Council, any questions? I have a question. Mr. Smith, what's the timeline? How long is this going to take before we get back to a let's do something about it

from a project perspective? Yes. Yeah. So, um, May 27th, I'll be in front of you to talk through what the transportation system plan is and some of those details. Um, we expect to kick that process off in June. um the data collection will kind of be the first piece. So I expect um we'll really start and the safety analysis will go first. We really want to understand what the safety is in the city um to really understand what project priorities should come out of that to really address some some clear safety issues. Um, and so I expect that probably in the first part of next year we will really get into uh being able to lay out uh clear projects and start to define what those scopes and what those projects could look like.

Okay, councilors councelor Newton.

So I brought up a meeting or two ago about dates for running a a gas tax or what have you. is I'm wondering would that be like the appropriate time to kind of discuss that um right now so we can get some consensus. So I don't think it should be this fall. I think right now it's Yeah, I I'll just jump in. Um Paul just just mentioned uh activity on their end and through the first of 27 though I think it starts to line up nicely with the May 27 election which is also if I recall the previous consultants who analyzed that type of thing suggested an election like that

as as a positive one for us to shoot for. I recall the same thing. Mloud,

thank you. Uh, we need to get these roads fixed like 10 years ago. So, I gosh, I while I I want to I want to put this on the ballot um when we think we'll have the best opportunity to do that. Um it kind of seems like it's uh really urgent, like maybe we shouldn't wait. Um so I'm kind of going back and forth with that. Um but definitely what I'm hearing from residents is that we need to get these roads fixed. We need to get them fixed now. We need to get them fixed whatever way we can with whatever funding we can as soon as possible. Uh so that's just what I'm hearing. Thank you. I think we're all hearing the same thing.

Looks like Mr. Scheler has a comment. Yeah, just Mr. Schulen. Yeah. So, as far as the timing comes with the ballot measure, um the sentiment that we heard from the community was yes, almost unanimously, we need to fix the roads. Um but it was not let's hurry up. can't hear you.

It it was not it was not a sentiment of let's hurry up and do this. It was a sentiment of we like the city needs to get this right and there's a lot of communication that needs to happen. There's a lot of um misconceptions that need to be straightened up through city communications uh before anything was to go to the ballot. Um, and there's a there's a good amount of work that the staff need to do to um identify specific projects, which was a key component to what the residents were asking for in these listening sessions. They want to know specifically what the money is going to go towards. They want uh very specific guard rails,

um, almost like a bond where there's a possible sunset date. Um, and so that would be my caution towards trying to throw it on the November ballot. Um, you can finish. I I have a comment and you can finish.

So, I'll just I'll just wrap up my thoughts on timing by saying um looking at this like from an electoral pattern perspective, uh, which is my job, um, May of 28 is probably the soonest that I would target. um in 2027 you cut your electorate in half. So you're looking at like a 20ish% turnout rate and it just shrinks dramatically the amount of people that you can um try to persuade and try to turn out to vote for to vote for your um for your initiative. um May or November of 28 are going to be your best your best bets as far as matching timing with the project specifications and everything that the city needs to accomplish.

So, how do we get the roads um started to be fixed before then?

Yeah. So I would say that you know part of what we're going to look at is especially our maintenance improvement program and and I think there's you know a big key piece here is there opportunity to improve our process. The answer is yes right and so so we want to take a look at that and I think we want to try to get some wins early on even as this process is going on that will lead to as the the rest of the projects really shake out um um and what that program or potentially could look like. Um and and that process improvement is a key ingredient that I think what we heard people want to see. They want to understand like what are you doing? Why are you doing it? All those types of things. And then showing some results from that. So that gives us some time between now especially in early next year where we think we can make some changes and hopefully have some people feel an impact and especially in some of the neighborhoods that that we I just discussed earlier. And um and that will lead we think to uh a better process overall like wherever from an initiative that comes forward um those are really important. They need to see some sort of process improvement and action coming out of of the department where we're trying to really do some things to make the best improvement that we can with what we have and I expect to do that.

One more followup. Um uh what can we do now that would give us a easy win when it comes to um fixing the roads? Is there something we can do now or very soon that can get at least some of these roads into a condition that is going to be um acceptable to to the residents um in our community.

So my answer is I believe so. I don't have that answer here today um but I think I'll have it soon. Um I just can't tell you exactly when. Um but I think uh within the next few months we'll we'll have a better shakeup because some of the processes are really beginning especially with our CIP and some other things. So it'll allow us to sort of really get a better sense for what what we could do in a very short term which I would expect to be early next year. Great. Thank you. Okay. So loving what I was hearing because if I had my brothers

um I would have this be a timelmited uh ballot measure. I think that's a great way to build trust. Folks here are not into like having any extra taxes, right? But hey, our roads, they stink, right? Um, so if we had like 5 cent, six, I don't know what it is. The state's not coming to save us. That ballot measure this fall is probably going to fail. Like, let's just be honest, the state's not going to save us. We got to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and and do this. I don't want to put a road service fee as a burden on, you know, my neighbor Helen across the street who drives hardly ever or um and she's paying the same as, you know, me who's like zipping to Costco back and forth getting a hot dog with my husband for lunch. Like, let's be honest, I'm putting more miles on our Albany roads. It should be based on on a gas tax. And we also then capture the folks coming right off the freeway going to get gas at Costco

like Portland does.

Yeah. Or Yeah. Everything like pay to use the road. People come from Corvalis, they're getting gas here, they're using our roads, they're go, you know, doing doing their thing here. Um, I love the idea of how you're going to structure like a bond. I think it's such a great way to like show, hey, we want we're going to with this money, if you approve this gas tax for 5 years, we're going to do wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. And I, if you look how Springfield has done this with their bonds, I love how they've laid it out in the voter pamphlets. Um, I think it's phenomenal for communicating uh the value of what the residents are going to receive if they if they, you know, vote for this, if they if they vote for that that um funding path. And uh I think that that is a winning solution. And I do think actually uh the if we if it's possible, it would be nice to just do it sooner May 27. I know we got to get it right, but I really think that we we can get there.

Comment. Councelor Smith,

there is something in place, very close to in place, that we could do sooner than a gas tax. That's our transportation utility. We voted that into law in December of 23. It's sitting there waiting for a rate to be attached to it and bills to go out. I understand that it's not considered equitable um to everyone, but I also recognize the traffic that is generated by non-driving people and people who don't drive very often and people who drive a lot. And I've said this before and I'm going to say it again, so please um bear with me. four garbage trucks a week. FedEx, UPS, Domino's Pizza, Door Dash, Uber,

Amazon,

Amazon. Um, you I mean, you name it, it happens. The mail, we still get mail delivery in Albany. It won't last forever, but that still happens. And then we we use our own cars and we go pick up our friends and our streets are used in ways that nobody imagined 40 years ago. They're used in ways that we didn't imagine before the pandemic. I walk my dog every day, as you all know, and on Fridays I observe how many recycling carts are full of Amazon boxes. Um, so I'm still an advocate for the transportation utility. It charges people it it it's as a steady source of income unlike a gas tax. It it accommodates electric vehicles as well as um carbon generating ones. And let me put point out the the uh comment about um structuring the gas tax the way Portland has done it. Their gas tax is suns setting since they have adopted a transportation utility. So everybody does it differently. I I strongly support a transportation utility. We can do it.

Councelor Newton.

So, I'm so glad you mentioned mail trucks or delivery vehicles cuz so I went down a rabbit hole on how other communities in our nation and state have been funding their roads, especially when they're, you know, constrained like ours. There's one um that is considered a less regressive initiative and it's not directly tied to gas. It's um a prefer prepared food tax. So, there's like a small fee. If you're like going through a drive-thru, you're going to McDonald's or whatever, you're going to get a prepared food. My my Costco hot dog. I might get a tax on on my Costco hot dog that I love to get. You know, where else can get you? I I keep I I'm not sponsored by Costco. Gosh, this is so embarrassing. I should stop mentioning it. Um or there are other communities that have also done a um they collect delivery fee. There's a delivery kind of delivery tax. That is something to also consider. There are different alternative ways if you're if you're concerned specifically about those things. Um especially since I do know that our um mail cars and I know like some of FedEx or Amazon cars are uh electric, right? So that's a different avenue as well to look at. I do not think that burdening our community members with a um regressive street maintenance tax if they aren't I think it's kind of it should be like more of like a use it thing. Um you know and I understand people are still using the roads if they're like you know getting something delivered but there's a way to capture that that um in a different way.

That's a huge discussion to have about it's a huge discussion. I've read way too much into this and it's been it's been really enlightening to see how other communities are doing things. If we entertain that, if we entertain that, it would be um interesting discussion. I notice Ashelin has a a food tax and beverage tax down there as well. Um but I will tell you this, I mentioned a sugar fee uh for sugary drinks like one the store my Diet Coke and and um I got drugged over the coals back then. So I'm just saying. Yeah. No, I I feel you. Um I'm really annoyed that aluminum prices are going up and it's impacting everything. You know, not just Diet Coke, but yes, everything. Yeah,

the Diet Coke that you purchased from Costco perhaps. Perhaps perhaps that you know. Okay. Thank you very much, council. Thank you very much for your presentation. I'm sure we'll hear more from you in soon um in the future. Thank you. Okay.

Um next on tonight's agenda is business from the council. Last week I started W three. Last time I started W three, we'll start with W two today. Councelor Van Drumlin. I just have one item to bring forward for business from the council tonight. So yesterday, uh, council received an email from Mayor Johnson, uh, detailing that there would be a new process this year, um, for the city manager's evaluation. Um, and that raised some concerns for me. Um, that the process, it's a significant departure from last year's process. Um and the process outlined itself was not of particular concern for me. Um but the fact that we were simply notified that this was happening. Um when the city council are the ones who have the authority over the city manager's employment and evaluation. Um, so my concern is more for the process rather than the process of the evaluation that was outlined, if that makes sense. Those both have process in them, but distinct things. Um, and I sent some uh messages um got some responses from the director of human resources and from the deputy city manager um outlining um some more details as to how how that may have happened um was a little bit different than how it was framed in the mayor's email. Sounds like there was a little bit more process than than had been outlined in um or decision-m process than had been outlined in the initial message that threw up my red flags. Um but what I would like to see happen um is for the council to give the

green light to that process to go forward rather than simply say, "Well, we're changing the process. Here you go, council. This is what we're going to do." Um, so I move um that either tonight if it's possible to do so um or at our next council meeting and and perhaps the deputy city manager can give me some perspective on on what's possible. Um, I I would like that new process, the rationale for it to all be outlined for the council in an open meeting. Uh, so that we can vote on whether or not we would like to proceed with that as the council. We have a motion. I I'll second that motion.

Can I Can I do my job? Thank you. We have a motion. Do I have a second? Sometimes you don't ask. He just seconded it. You don't need to call for seconds, sir. Okay. And then um so we have all those in favor say I. I. I. I. call for discussion on that or are we just voting? Is there any discussion? Yeah, I No, I have Go ahead. Please.

No, we're on discussion. Yeah, I um Yeah, it surprised me too from from the last um evaluation process. I um I don't think the process was the issue. Um, I felt like I I had my concerns and I got a chance to to put them out in both the written paper and then the discussion that we had. Um, I just don't see the need for consultant and I don't I I saw the message a later message from the director of human resources saying that it came out of discussions from last year and I really do not recall where that came from. So my my inclination is to continue the process that happened in the past where we reply to a staff member who compiles them and then we have a discussion about it. I think it's as simple as that. I I I just I'm loathed to spend the money on a consultant even though I realize it probably wouldn't be very much but um it's work that we have to do and I think we can do it.

Councelor Drum then councelor Smith here. Um I I would like to yield some time to the deputy city manager um to perhaps give us some perspective and and maybe answer some questions um as we discuss this.

Yeah, absolutely. Um so just to provide um some background um so over the years the city manager process has gone through different iterations and that has largely been controlled or or the process itself has largely been designed by staff. So historically um the um the contract is laid out that the city manager is to receive an annual evaluation. Um it was first done through the city manager's office directly. Um that was feedback was received that that was a conflict. It was then moved into um the HR office. And every year when that evaluation is done um our HR director um does solicit feedback from all parties involved um which is not just the council. Um there's also a 360 piece that occurs um from uh the direct reports and staff um and then also uh Peter as the recipient of that feedback in regards to um what worked and what didn't work in the process. Um so last year following that um evaluation um the feedback that we received in that um it's pretty across the board. Um, we had some concerns in regards to um, having staff be um, an unbiased facilitator in that process. Um, we had some concerns that were iterated um, in regards to having the mayor be the facilitator of that discussion um, rather than there being a neutral party uh, for the council uh, meeting on that. Um we also received feedback from the staff side um because over the last several years um as part of the 360 evaluation we have only received on average two to three responses from the entirety of the uh director level team and the feedback on that was in regards to um again running that through a member of staff. They were uncomfortable even though the feedback is provided in aggregate to both Peter and the council. they were uncomfortable with that information coming from them directly to a staff

member who they work with who would know that identity um and what was said because unfortunately as much as we try to keep everything confidential you know how a workplace is um and so that was a concern that we heard from that side and it's very difficult for a city manager when that is a huge piece of the day-to-day operations to not be able to get that feedback um from direct reports it's also a huge burden um for you guys to understand how day-to-day management goes and then finally we heard from Peter as the third party involved in that um that the feedback that he was receiving um was not helpful. There were not clear goals and there was not a clear consensus consensus or report from the city council, but rather seven individual requirements um that make it very difficult to compare um how his performance is working against um the kind of the big three things that are looked at which is sort of the strategic plan, the day-to-day operations of the city and then the general leadership. Sorry,

I I just want to bring us back to the actual topic in motion at hand and it it sounds like you may be answering my question here. Um would it be are you prepared tonight to give kind of a breakdown? Um what the new process would look like? Um perhaps cost for the planning on doing that tonight. Cool. Okay, great. It just it wasn't on the agenda. So, like I have no idea like what actually I want to be respectful of you and and and your time and and what you need to have prepared in order to do this, right? So, okay. So, if we vote yes that that we want to get a breakdown of this, we would be able to do that tonight.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um so where I was going to I was going to kind of walk you through I was giving a little bit of the understanding of the why and where the feedback came from. Um but I also wanted to segue that into um so for the process coming back taking that feedback from all three sides. that's a pretty, you know, that that's there's a lot of feedback there saying that there's some pain points in how that process is working. Um, so we put our heads together um to look at what are some opportunities to try to address that. And a very common uh space for cities over 50,000 is many of them move into this uh professional uh neutral facil neutral thirdparty facilitator uh for their city manager performance evaluations. Um so over the course of the of um the last month and a half um because we had to do some due diligence ahead of that talking to other cities um we did go through an interview process um with three different firms um to really make sure um we understood what their approach was that their approach responded to the feedback that we heard um from those uh three different parties involved in the process. Um and then um ultimately uh Rafelis um had the best showing in that interview um based both on experience and the process. Um so to bring you to the process piece of it, um what we are looking at uh this year is uh rather than having uh Holly as our HR director uh be the primary uh facilitator for this, the facilitator would move to a thirdparty facilitator through Rafalis. So you have that neutral third party there. Um in regards to the specific feedback mechanisms, um another area that I apologize I forgot to mention um was a pain point in the process is that um there has been a lot of difficulty in staff getting responses um not only from other staff uh but also from members of council um and so um rather than going through the paper process uh Rafelis's approach is to do an in-person interview or excuse me a virtual interview um with each of the

council members and why that is helpful is because they are able to go through the questions with you. Uh they are also able to provide education on um what an evaluation looks like, what are some of the things that you are typically looking for because for uh many um this may be their first time ever doing um a city manager evaluation or um or they may have very little, you know, you do it once a year, but this is a essentially a major corporation operation, right? We're running all of these different entities. So, um, they will go through that as part of that process. They'll send the questions ahead of time, um, so that you are able to see them, prepare for them. They will be able to ask you follow-up questions. So, if something is not quite clear, they don't understand it, they can start to ask those follow-up pieces. They will take that. At the same time, they will simultaneously be running a similar process for the 360s uh, with the um, executive leadership and direct reports uh, for uh, Peter. um in order to get that feedback from both of those sides, they will take all of that, compile it into a report and that will be presented uh to the council ahead of the evaluation. Um as well as Peter um Peter at the same time, there's a lot of moving pieces that all happen at the same time. Peter at the same time will be working through his self-evaluation. Um so working through what he heard from you um as goals for this year, which is largely drawn um from that strategic plan. Um and then he will be working through what are those accomplishments, what does he feel um he has done over this past period and that will all get rolled into that report. uh they will present at that July 6th council meeting and they will actually facilitate uh the uh executive session um regarding that piece um in order to go through that to facilitate council discussion and to be and to get to a singular uh report out set of goals and expectations for the council rather than just having um seven different uh perspectives. They will come to a here's what your consensus is

on the overall performance of the city manager. Now, he does still receive and we'll hear the seven different perspectives, but it's getting to that single cohesive space. Does that help to answer it? It does. We We have a We have an active motion on the floor, though, and I feel like we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. We are. Um I I I I was I was mostly asking you to come up so that we could answer the feasibility question to get out whether we could do this tonight. So are are there like Yeah, I'm gonna So back to you, sir. So

So So for me, um we we talked about this issue what, several months ago, talked about it again, and I said, "Is this within my purview as mayor?" And she said, "Yes." So that's why I said, "Let's go ahead and do this thing." What specifically is within your purview? Relis. So that's where I made my decision and I sent out the email. The email could have been rewarded better and I apologize for that. Um but my understanding is the staff council could change it for the right the city man city attorney. So council could change the program. Yes. That's what you we're proposing now. Right. So

yes and I I I had one of the emails that I sent was to the city attorney asking if that authority vested within the council or the office of the mayor. And the answer that I got back was the council. And so yeah, and so I want to clarify the the portion that has been historically in the purview of of the mayor and this is absolutely something that was within the power of the council to change is historically the council has essentially turned over that staff prepares the process, the mayor approves the process. Now if that is a process that this council wants to change, that is absolutely something that we can do. It's different than how we've done historically, but many cities do it that way. I've worked in other cities that do it that way. It's not a difficult change to make moving forward.

It sounds like we're doing cart before the horse. Can we just vote on this so we can actually do this?

Yes. Can I I I would like to request the city reporter to re uh excuse me, reread the motion on the floor, please. So the motion that I have is from uh Van Drelin with a second from Thompson says moves that tonight or at the next council meeting we go over the new process the rationale to be outlined for the council in open meeting so we can vote on the process. So, so question about the motion. Um, we are we then to have a second vote on what we believe the process should be.

Correct. Correct. Okay. Thank you. So, we heard the motion. We've had some discussion. Any other discussion with councelor Smith? You had your question? So, I have a motion in a second. All those in favor say I. I. I. I. Those oppose say no. Roll call, please. Councelor Smith, I. Councelor McGee, I. Councelor Newton, yep. Councelor Thompson. Yes. Councelor Van Drealan. I. Councelor McCloud. I. Motion passes. Thank you. So, what's next?

Well, you guys give either this meeting or the next meeting. So, I'm unclear from this motion. I well I that's why I wanted to ask you up here before we voted on it to see like what would be because because if we could do it tonight that would be great so we can move forward also 9 p.m. Well and I would say we already have because of the historical way the process has been done we do already have you know that the email went out to you it's also gone out to staff so I kind of need some direction on if I need to halt the brakes on Rafelis because they are already doing work so

how much does it cost? Yeah. So, uh, the cost for the initial first year, um, is 20,000, but we spend more than double that in staff time actually doing it every year. Let me know if I'm out of order. I would move to conduct the city manager evaluation under the new process as recommended by staff.

So with that I'm have a motion. Well, there is there is no second. So I know sometime I have a motion. I was waiting for a second. I'll second it. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? So I'm I want some clarification. So yeah with that motion are we then saying that so because talking about the his historical nature of like how things are man is that like changing how things are done historically or could this change again like the the process is that what we're like so right now it looks like it'll be changing it then if the next council wants to change it back they can do that. Am I am I understanding that correctly?

Yes. So, so the the motion on the floor, and correct me if I'm wrong about your intention, councelor Smith, um is simply to adopt the process as recommended. Any So, like if we want to set specific expectations for city staff, which regardless of how the vote on this motion goes, I've got a mo another motion in my pocket, don't worry. Um uh then like we we could do that. like we need to deal with the question on on the floor right now, but I I think it also behooves us to set clear expectations for the city staff going forward because it sounds like there was some ambiguity there and different councils have different preferences. Um like I will fully acknowledge that. Um, so yeah, let's let's deal with the question of of the councelor Smith's motion and then we can we can give direction to city staff in whatever direction we wish after we deal with that.

Can you reread what was motion? So the motion was by Smith and it was a motion to conduct a city manager evaluation under the new process as recommended by Smith and it was seconded by McGee. Any further discussion?

Uh yeah. Um I would vote no on this. I I can't 20,000 to do the evaluation of the city manager. I mean come on. And I question 20,000 worth of staff time too. But we we have the staff. We have the staff. Mind you, I served on the Greater Alb School board and I currently serve on the educational service district of which I know it's not the lofty city of Albany, but evaluating the superintendent is the most important thing you do. And guess what? We get it done. The individuals, the elected individuals get it done with the help of staff. I, you know, I'm I'm gobsmacked that staff feel like they can't reply. I mean, are they not grown-ups? they can't reply. Uh, honestly, I I don't know how to deal with that. But, but put that aside. The idea that we cannot evaluate the city manager ourselves, the city council. Um, no. 20,000. No. When and it's in the context of anytime we ask for anything, we don't have money for it. So, no.

I have a comment.

Go ahead, Councelor Smith. The thing I like about this process that from what I know about it so far is that it will the the interviewing of the individual counselors. I don't believe that counselors could or should approach an interview like that and take the fifth as they have done on the written evaluations that I can think of going back many years. Um, I've been part of the staff evaluation process in the past, seeing the final product and I guess I wasn't involved in the evaluation, but I saw the final product as a member of the executive team and and now as having done five of these, um, there are always counselors who just don't respond. They don't they either don't turn in their materials till the very last minute or when they do, they've checked a box and not made any comments. whatsoever. So, you don't know what their what their checks mean. And eliciting personal responses in real time, responses to questions from a stranger, I think, is a valuable exercise. We need to know how our council members feel about our the chief executive that we employ without waiting until an executive session to spring things on him. I that I this will take a little bit of that away and make it a little more civilized

and it's I I believe it's more fair to staff giving information to a person you work with on a daily basis and then talking about your boss. You don't know what relationship they have with their boss. You don't know if they're they're having a hard time themselves articulating their concerns about their boss. And so I think having a neutral party come in and provide that access to them so they can be honest and open and provide real real time feedback about their boss without not having to fear anonymity, not having to worry about being exposed. I I think it just is a much better process. I think it's fair and I I can see where it cost $20,000 to do a comprehensive eval of an our chief executive. And so it doesn't surprise me um that it cost 25 $20,000. I thought it was higher than that. I've been I've done this for eight years and I think this is a great process and it takes the pressure off us because everybody can be honest with anonymity. I have to get the council member here next.

So, so, so for me it makes sense and that's why I went forward with it and I apologize for the process being broken now that it's fixed and I'll go and defer to council van. No, no, she Dr. was up. Was it

just a comment? Uh if I I I don't know, maybe I just think highly of you, uh Peter, but I feel like if someone said, "Oh, I'm so bugged about my boss, you're not going to take it personally. You're not going to like retaliate." So I I I just feel like I I don't know. I I I don't think that employees should ever fear retaliation from you as their leader. And so I'm not seeing the justification in that regard. So I just wanted to say like I don't think that Mr. Troen over here is going to be like you are on my list if something got back to him and like so I I don't know. I I think I think more highly of you and I I agree with uh councelor Thompson. We have people on staff. They feel like isn't this baked into folks schedules to uh to handle this? So,

m I think that this is a standard HR issue. There are laws against uh retaliation. There are laws against um being being upset with a whistleblower. Um I think that um these are these are standard HR things. These are standard these are standard things and we don't need to do anything excessive. Um that's going to cost the city um a consultant fee. Um so I'll be voting no. Councelor John Galine.

Um where where I'm assuming that the 20,000 comes out of an existing budget line item. Is that correct? Can you Yes, we have savings on other projects. uh in consulting fees for some other areas that we were able to pull. Okay, let's put 20 grand into some road maintenance. It's the wrong fund, but let's move it around. Okay, so so now but I do also want to clarify I I do want to clarify the comments back from staff were not in relation to retaliation from Peter. I want to be very clear about it. That concern was in regards to their anonymity being maintained throughout the organization. So I just want to be very clear on that. Yeah. And and I have a question. Councelor McGee. Okay.

I'm sorry. Councelor Van can finish his thought then. I do have a question.

All right. So, um the only other thing that I would that I was going to say once I had an answer to the question about where the where the money was coming from was that um well, yes, there are protections for or rather against retaliation, not protections for retaliation. Um uh there there are protections for whistleblowers against retaliation, things like that. Again, the concerns were not we're not over that. There are also best practices in human resources and evaluation and things like that. And I think that there is value in protecting the anonymity of folks who are giving a 360 evaluation particularly for the chief executive of the city. Um, and again, my my concern is not primarily over the process that was proposed. It was over how we got here. Um, and I actually don't have a problem with with what's proposed. Um, I'm literally my only challenge was we should have we should have had this discussion before those emails went out and decided on it as a council. So, I'm actually leaning towards voting yes on this. So, we have a motion and a second before us.

Dr. McGee had something to say. I'm sorry, Dr. McGee. I Thank you. I just um um I know people keep hearing the 20,000 figure. So, I was just wondering just very quickly because it is after 9. Is that was that like the running price for a sort of consultant firm to come in and do this? Was that like the cheapest or the best? Have we used these folks before? That's kind of what I wanted to know.

Yeah. So, that's the um standard price. Um so when we uh talked to other communities as well as reviewed uh the other firms uh the price points were coming between 15 and 30,000. Um so 20,000 is firmly within there. Um and then I apologize the last second half of your question just left my brain as I was answering. Could you repeat the last part of that? The last part was is that the I guess running price

or was that the have we used these folks before? What it was? Um so not for this specific uh not for specific review of of uh city manager performance obviously. Um but we have used Rap Telus. We actually used them uh most recently uh for the very successful recruitment of our new public works director and we were we had very excellent service from them wonderful experience and they were on top of everything. That that's what I wanted to know. It sounded very familiar, but I wanted to have it out in the open that we have used them before and they have been re reliable and things of that nature. So, thank you for for that. Okay, that's all I have. Okay, let's go ahead and um I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I.

Those opposed say no. Thank you. No. No. Can we roll call, please? Councelor Smith, yes. Councelor McGee, yes. Councelor Newton, no. Councelor Thompson. Uh, no. Councelor Van Drealin, I. Councelor McCloud, no. We have a tie. I have a yes. Next. Are you done with this business from the council?

Uh, no, not quite. Um, like I mentioned, I have one more motion in my pocket then. Um, so I I move that um any substantive changes to the future evaluation process be brought before the council um in an open meeting. And even if there are not substantive changes that uh city staff do a briefing on the city manager evaluation process. I think that's good practice anyway because we'll have new members of the council in the future, that kind of thing. um prior to the process being published and pushed out to council and staff each year. I will second that.

I'll second that. Have a motion and a excuse me, a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed say no. Thank you. You got that? Yeah, I believe that was unanimous. Yeah. Okay, good. And that concludes my business for the council. Next, Council Mloud.

Thank you. Gosh, how do I follow that? Wow. Okay. So, I have um sorry, I have a few things here. Uh uh mostly events, upcoming events. I wanted to um let our community know about the uh fire department. Fill the boot is this Saturday 9 to 4 near Fred Meyer. Um benefits the musculardrophe association. Um get out there, fill the boot. uh APL craft supply swap um uh I'm sorry, the Albany Public Library craft supply swap is June 5th and 6th. Um also Wednesday, May 20th at 5:00 PM is the community conversation around the use of automated license plate reader cameras in Albany. That's at the Riverfront Community Center. Um I'd love to see everyone at that at that event. um some past events that I attended. Yesterday I was at the 18th annual Peace Awards celebration for GAPS High School students and teachers. The celebration put on by the Albany Peacemakers celebrated their passion for peace, justice, and inclusion. And I'm so proud of all of the students that received awards that night. On May 7th, I attended the Albany Partnership for Housing and Community Development open house at Periwinkle Place where I toured the first built on-site fully ADA accessible unit. The nonprofit's committed to keeping these homes truly affordable for our residents, and I am proud to see this kind of steady, practical investment in Albany families. Accessible and affordable housing is foundational, and this project is a strong example of doing it right. Also, on May 7th, I spoke at the Albany Civic Academy about why I became a city counselor. It was great talking with community members interested in how our government works. Uh May 9th was the Cumberland Community Center bell

ringing. That was really cool. Got to hear that bell for the first time. Also on May 9th was the YMCA carnival and platypus drop. I had a great time with my daughter there. Uh the organiz uh excuse me, the organizers of the Albany Mushroom Festival were there helping kids create DIY blue oyster mushroom growing kits and we loved making those. It was a great tactile learning experience. Uh, my daughter Ellie is looking forward to harvesting her own mushroom crop from that. I also attended the North Albany Middle School production recently of the musical Annie. I was blown away by the quality of this musical theater production. It was much better than anything I did in high school. So, thank uh thank you and kudos to the cast and crew of that production. Uh, question about um FL the flashing light installation in North Albany. Um it was great to see this um this addition um with the flashing lights. I do have a question for staff about um the the flashing light signs. When will the sign be updated that says uh school starts on 92? Uh do we have any information about that sign? It's it's really outdated at this point. Um Peter,

uh I don't have that answer for you right off. I know there's some changes happening this coming Monday, but I can check into that and get an email to all of you about uh when that verbiage is changed.

Yeah, there's the the sign that says school starts September 2nd is it's probably a little outdated by now. Also, um I wanted to let people know, this is my last last thing, I promise. I wanted to let people know that Jackson Street is the Oregon statewide partner for a pilot program uh providing one-time cash payments to youth. age 18 to 23 with a history or current enrollment in the foster care system. The Lane County pilot program last year averaged $3,700 per youth. Interested youth should reach out to their case manager or service provider to receive those funds. And that is all I have. Mayor, thank you. Yes.

Sorry to interrupt, but we have a requirement as we're past 9:00. We need a council motion that we can continue. This is true. I was just going to do that. I will move that we continue past 9:00 as needed. Second motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. I. Thank you. We're not that far away. Uh councelor Thompson, you're next up. No. Uh in interest of time, I'll I'll I'll skip for tonight. Councelor Newton. Okay. I will be really quick because I actually have two questions I'd like answered. Um got an email earlier this week from a constituent about pedestrian safety over on Corey, Spring Hill, Corey. Um, never go loop. Oh, no.

That intersection up in North Albany, uh, for families, cyclists, people crossing the road. Um, it's 40 mile per hour speed limit up there. Is that a Benton County road or is that is that an US? Because I know we have some funky things up in North Albany. And, uh, I would really appreciate if staff could uh, one, okay, one, clarify jurisdiction for me, please. Um, and maintenance responsibility for that stretch of road. Um, and then number two, would love if if it is our football, um, to have staff review the safety conditions in that area and explore maybe whether we could add a crosswalk or flashing lights or ideally a crosswalk, you know, basic things. Um, and then I also earlier, I think everyone got this email, but um, Peggy Burus, uh, the, um, Albony Public Schools Foundation director reached out about the continuation of, um, the GAPS water awareness program. Uh, my daughter, who's going to be a fifth grader somehow uh, in the fall, participated in three years of this program. She's really confident in the water. Um I'm genuinely sad to hear that other kids are not going to have the same opportunity moving forward. Uh I know that this initiative initi happened because of a child drowning and um we're surrounded by rivers and waterways and this feels like a really important safety issue especially for families that may not have access to swim lessons especially since I'm sure the other parents here on the dis know that they they go quick um especially the ones that are after hour after working hours. Um, so I would really appreciate if sta if staff could look into um sharing whether I know that um director Leane, you know, is is looking at us and stuff, but if there are any potential partnerships or funding opportunities or other solutions that city or parks and recreation could help explore to

preserve um or rebuild access to youth water safety. I do know that what um executive director Burus stated was that we they have access through the for public school foundation for a dedicated amount of money specifically for water safety lessons like a a amount um I can't remember what it was. It was like it was a large amount from the SH family foundation. Yeah. Um and it's specifically designated for this. And I would really

I I yeah, I would just be so heartbroken if another child that didn't have access to this ended up getting hurt. And yeah, so come on down. All right. Can you hear me? So yes, we have been having those conversations. When GAPS first approached us, they let us know that it was going to be cut for a variety of reasons. um and we were pretty heartbroken um and said, "Give us a little bit of time. We're going to come back and we're going to shoot our shot." And so, um looking through changes that would potentially help liability, that would provide additional time for, um you know, time in class to practice reading, all that kind of good stuff. Um that's why they decided to go on the land-based um and cut it back. So, we all know that um that program reaches our most vulnerable families that won't necessarily have family members or support that are able to get them to a swim class, swim lesson, even if it's free. Uh access, all that kind of things are problematic. So, we are in the process of looking um you're correct. The SH Foundation has an endowment with us. This past year, we were able to pull $50,000. So, funding isn't the issue. That money remains. Um sorry as I'm chatting directly to you. Um so that funding remains. So we have to work through the foundation um uh the endowment which is administered through the the school foundation um to propose any additional projects. So we're not going to be able to get you know our 15,400 kids that same access no matter what we do in all honesty. So we're trying to figure out if that looks like a voucher program, is it free swim lessons? Is it providing free passes? Um once again knowing that we're going to run into the same limitations that without a bus coming from a school um we're not going to get all the kids. So um and in all honesty working within our parameters of an aquatic facility that has to generate

some revenue and serve other patrons. We only have so much time that is available after school after hours. So um we're doing everything that we can to save as much as we can of the program because we believe strongly in it. It's you know almost 50 years old. Um and we're thankful that the school district allowed an inbased, you know, water, not sorry, um land-based program to continue in the future. Uh but yeah, we we agree water safety is a critical critical for our community and trying to figure out how we can be a part of that.

I don't want to take up too much time, but a landbased system like how effective is that? Like I I cannot even imagine like learning to swim like like on land like how is that is there science that shows that's actually effective? And I would um our water safety awareness class is not actual swim lessons. Um so we want to make sure that if kiddos are by a lake, by their river, at a pool um that they know how to properly use and the importance of a life jacket that they understand if they fall in what are ways to uh take care of themselves and get to safety if they see somebody else go in. So it's not going to be the same. It's not. Um, but we'll be able to work through education and we're trying to get creative and to finding ways to make that um, a fraction of how exciting it is to be in an actual water environment and a kayak that's being tipped over and all that kind of good stuff. So, we're working on it.

Thank you. It used to be in second grade they had a landbased program. So, um, that happened way back in the day. So, there is some curriculum that already exists. It's just a matter of figuring out how to adapt it. Sorry. No, thank you. I appreciate it. This has been like it's a lot. It it's so much. It's the safety of our our our littlest and most vulnerable residents. You know, when I joined the Navy at boot camp, there was like 40 people that could not swim. We had to simulate going into the water and they had to come in and get them. And I was lucky enough to learn take lessons. Yeah. And because California had canals, so we always had safety lessons on that. That was important. And that's that's all she wrote.

Okay. Uh, councelor McGee, no business tonight. Thank you. Councelor Smith,

I will pass along uh two things. One is a request um from a constituent for um the council to consider asking Republic services to if they have a program or could make available a program for picking up um sharps containers um at curbside. I spoke to Sarah Steen with Republic Services and she said that she is not aware of any program like that um in their service area other than in Woodburn and the cost um spread across the the service area was $19.80 a month per customer. The people who um sent me this request have signed up. They're both insulin dependent diabetics and they so they generate a fair number of sharps and they have signed up with a mail service that Republic offers as well. Um so they just drop their box in the mail. It's expensive. It's in the like 50 something dollar range a month but it is just for that customer. It's not for the full base. And so if if the council wants to consider adding that, I I've spoken to the folks at Republic and and they're prepared to address that. Uh if you're interested, um the other thing was that I've been in correspondence with a neighbor of the bottle location at Columbus and um Sandy. Um

no, it's a resident. the resident who lives on the corner. Um problems with a recurring um camp, the homeless camp that keeps um popping up overnight on the sidewalks around the bottle drop property. And it's been it was cleaned out this week for the second or third time. And he's um documenting it with film or with videos and photos and times and descriptions. and so working closely with APD and APD is working with um the community outreach assistance team and chance. So that's um anyway that's something that that I've been corresponding about.

Okay, that's it. So um so for me, I've said a couple things. Um the bottle drop person, the the business owner of the businesses in that mall right next to it. They have reached out to me as well. So, thank you for engaging that. And I went by today and it was cleaned out. Uh something happened in our community that we lost a a wonderful human being last week. U Ray Hilts. He's been before us hundreds of times. He passed away and u the loveliest man you'll ever meet. Philanthropist, volunteer, lions, optimist carousel. And over the last eight years, he's been a thorn in my side. He's also been also been a good friend. So, um I I'll miss him and um and I feel for his wife and his friends, but Ray was a was a great man and he's funny and he would just drop by and say, "How you doing?" He'd sit down. Okay, I'm good. He'd walk out my office. So, he just had that sense of humor that was very endearing to me.

Ray was a friend of mine as well. Do you know when his services? I have not heard yet. I've been waiting for that information.

Okay. Thank you. Um, and also teen adult, the NAACP is sponsoring a teen adult idol program at LBCC on Friday nights at 6:30. Um, we had initially 16 people, now we're down to 12 or 10. These young people and adults in our community can sing. Holy cow. And performances last week were amazing. So, we're coming down to the finale is on the 22nd. And um you you you got to come to LBCC on Friday night at 6:30 because these young people and older folks put it in the put their heart out there and they perform. They sing great and they're just a lot of fun to be around. And then last one I have is the Yvets housing is the vertical steel is going up. So if you drive on Price Road, you see the steel going up. So they're starting to build the first floor and it's a really big deal for our veteran community and our homeless and low-inccome veteran community. I'm excited about it. Um and gets a chance to take a look at that and that I will turn it over to the city manager his report.

Thank you, mayor. Early in my career as a Coast Guard helicopter pilot, I had to pull the lifeless body of a seven-year-old boy out of the surf and unfortunately that wasn't the first and only time. So, we take it very seriously and we are looking very hard to try to find alternate sources of funding. Um, I wanted to point out that municipal clerks week was last week and we have a pair of wonderful clerks in Eric and McKenna. So, uh, I congratulate them and and I would offer if you get a chance to to thank them for their service, that would be great. Public works week is next week, May 17th through 23rd. And similarly, there was talk tonight about not wanting to worry about what happens when you flush the toilet or turn the shower on. That's all thanks to uh our public works staff. And then this Friday is Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15th. The ha the flags will be at half mass uh around the city and really around the state. Uh there was question about how that happens. Um, so I wanted to provide some some illumination of that. The display of of flags is uh at city-owned buildings is done in accordance with federal and state laws. The US flag is lowered to half staff by order of the president or the state governor. Um, it's specifically or or or uh customarily flown at half staff on specific national observances and those include peace officers memorial day this Friday, May 15th, the last Monday in May, which as you know is Memorial Day, uh September 11th, and then December 7th, which is National

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. In Oregon, the governor frequently issues additional half staff orders for fallen law enforcement officers, firefighters, and EMS personnel, uh, members of the armed forces in Oregon, or victims of major tragedies. And for Oregon cities, the governor's office will issue an order that's distributed by email to points of contact in cities and counties uh, statewide. You should ever have any questions about how that's done, uh, please let me know. I think um Council Mloud mentioned our uh engagement opportunities for automated license plate readers. There's one with the public safety commission meeting on Monday night and then another one at the um Riverfront Community Center on Wednesday night. And the last thing I have is just to answer the question about Neverg Loop that is Benton County Road.

That stuff is so funky up there. all those.

Oh, and yes, I Yes, the mayor is holding up a um a framed certificate. And let me explain what this is. It's uh as part of the celebrations for the League of Oregon C's 100th year last year and at the suggestion of their uh centennial celebration committee. The League of Oregon Cities board adopted resolutions which recognized the founding members of the league. There were 25 cities which created the league. I won't read them off to you, but at the top of the list is Albany. Uh, and now it's 101 years ago. And the resolution recognizing Albany among the founding cities has been framed and given to the city. I won't read the whole resolution, but I'll just read a a couple of points. A resolution of the League of Oregon Cities recognizing and commemorating the partnership between the city of Albany and the League of Oregon Cities. Whereas the League of Oregon Cities was founded in 1925 by agreement of Albany and the the list of cities goes all the way through Warrington and Yamh Hill. And whereas the Oregon Constitution creates the right for cities to self-regulate. And whereas the League of Oregon Cities is celebrating its centennial anniversary. And whereas the city of Albany is a strong partner of the LOC, an exemplary city within the state of Oregon. Now therefore, the board of directors of the league resolves as follows. Recognizes the city of Albany as an extraordinary city within the state and recognizes the city of Albany as an exemplary partner and supporter of the League of Oregon Cities. Enacted December 12th of last year. Jessica Angel, president. That is all I have. Mayor, thank you.

Thank you very much, Peter. And you can look at the plaque of the citation right there. Um, next meeting is Mayor. Yes. I just wanted to say real quick something. Um, because I I had talked to one of the counselors earlier and said I would be prepared to give an update on Simpson Park when the council would like to hear it. Um, I can do a short one now. We can do it later on, but we had some citizens here tonight speaking on that topic about their property being red tagged and whatnot. So if if if it's and I understand it's late so I can I can hold this till the 27th or we can do to left council if you want to hear tonight up to you

and and we'll we're we're also compiling that information and I can distribute it by email tomorrow morning as well. Yeah, you might some of the counselors might get some emails in the next what between now and the 27th. So I've gotten some already.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, in a nutshell, I'll just say this. The property in Simpson Park is in Millersburg. It's not in the city limits. Almost all of it is in the city of Millersburg. Um, we've been in contact with Lynn County Sheriff's Office, with APD, uh, trying to ascertain moving forward who is going to be patrolling that area. It's going to be Lynn County Sheriff there. They went out there yesterday, made contact with 36 camps. I think they made seven arrests on outstanding warrants while they were out there, but the city is going to be sending resources out there to talk to people about um potential resources that that are available to them. Uh I know that one of the csos and I think our park ranger went out with the Lyn County Sheriff's Office today to do some of that and I believe APD is going to be sending people out as well. Um but the way that property is situated in the city of Millersburg, how Albany is involved in it is that we have a conservation easement um from Simpson Timber in favor as the grantee of of the conservation easement. The problem is is as part of the requirements for that conservation easement. We have to keep that property in a certain condition and Simpson Timber has made it clear that C il the camping on that property is not permitted. So, we are not allowed to continue to that out there. But, and again, it's not in the city limits. So, our Albany Police Department won't be patrolling it. It'll be the sheriff's department that'll be out there that'll do the the patrols on that. So, you'll probably hear that Albany is doing, you know, is taking the property away and stuff. It's not ours. And the city of Millersburg is actually their council is is getting ready to make an issue about it too that people are camping on it because I think there's been some some issues with some of their local businesses that abut those camps.

Okay. Um but in any event, that's where we're at right now, but I can we can discuss it in detail at another meeting if y'all would like. So, thank you, Mayor. I have one thing to add to that. staff from uh Chance and Second Chance shelter were on scene with them as well out there. Yes. Yes. Yep. And the the folks from the community outreach assistance team are very familiar with the people who live at the camp. Yes. Yep.

Okay. So, next meeting dates ARRA Albony Revitalization Agency meeting May 27th at 4:00 in Chambers. So, Commissioner Chair Newton will be heading that meeting. Next city council meeting is May 27th at 6 p.m. here in the chambers and then Monday, June 8th, 2022 for a work session at 4 p.m. And with that, I'll adjourn the meeting. Have a good evening, y'all.